Gravenhurst

Posted: May 28, 2012 in flac, FOLK, Gone, Singer/Songwriter, upcoming FLAC uploads
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  • Gravenhurst is a vehicle for the music of singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Talbot, who lives in Bristol, England and is signed to Warp Records.

Talbot characterises Gravenhurst as a world created by sound and language, ever-changing and conjured from disparate ingredients. Noticeable is the melodic noise of My Bloody Valentine, the lush vocal harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel, and the influence of a diverse range of guitarists including fingerpickers Bert Jansch and Richard Thompson (Talbot rarely uses a pick). He says that the most important musical event of his life was discovering The Smiths, which encouraged him to attempt song writing. Talbot’s ultimate guitar hero is Johnny Marr, but he remains a Morrissey fan, citing his 1992 solo album “Vauxhall & I” among his favourite records of all time. While the cryptic symbolism enshrouding Talbot’s lyric have their roots in his literary heroes Alan Moore and Ian Sinclair, the fundamental emotional power of his songs was born of a troubled adolescence soundtracked by the Smiths, The Cure and Joy Division.

Later, his discovery of Bristol’s lo-fi collective; Third Eye Foundation, Flying Saucer Attack, Movietone and Crescent, made Bristol his first choice for University study, with his eyes opened to the DIY possibilities of home recording. Puzzling pigeon-holer critics with each successive release (Folk? Acid Folk? Shoegaze? Post-Rock? On Warp Records..?) Talbot has displayed a shark-like inability to remain still, but over the course of five self-produced albums, the consistency is clear. A fragile yet powerful voice, intricate guitar work, unsetling ambience and uniquely haunting lyrics have earned Gravenhurst a devoted and loyal cult following. As a four piece, Gravenhurst has left audiences open-mouthed and partially deafened by the telepathically entwined guitars and ghost train dynamics of ‘Song From Under The Arches’. Solo, Nick has reduced 3,000 festival-goers to complete silence with his bone-chilling rendition of Husker Du’s controversial ‘Diane’.

Gravenhurst’s latest album, The Western Lands, was released on 10 September 2007. May 2008 saw the release of a double A-side single, ‘Nightwatchman’s Blues’/’Farewell, Farewell’..

While Talbot began performing solo, singing and fingerpicking a guitar, since 1999 many other Bristol musicians, friends and hired-hands have propelled Gravenhurst into a powerful live band, touring extensively across Europe, and the USA, both as a headline act and as support to bands including Broadcast, Belle & Sebastian, Explosions In The Sky and Animal Collective. Previous albums were all Talbot’s work, but drummer Dave Collingwood added his signature style to notable tracks on ‘Fires In Distant Buildings’ (especially motorik single ‘The Velvet Cell’) and ‘The Western Lands’. With the drums and sole guitar recorded in one take, ‘Grand Union Canal’ showcases the symbiotic sensitivity that evolved between Talbot and Collingwood through eight or so years of performing and touring. In May 2008 Dave Collingwood decided to leave the rigours of touring behind. Although most of the instruments on all the Gravenhurst albums were played by Talbot, Collingwood began adding his signature style to many tracks from ‘Fires In Distant Buildings’ onwards (especially motorik single ‘The Velvet Cell’) as well as aiding the engineering and production of ‘The Western Lands’. With the drums and sole guitar recorded in a single take, the track ‘Grand Union Canal’ in particular showcases the unspoken, symbiotic sensitivity that evolved between them over many years of touring. Fortunately, Collingwood has not ruled out future recording involvement. According to reliable sources, he simply wants time to conquer all of South America, turn it into a giant cymbal and set up his own country where everyone has to play the drums, forever.

With Talbot himself in need of a change of gear, so it was that the finest Gravenhurst Sonic Group Incarnation thusfar was shelved at the peak of its power, with Alex Wilkins following Robin Allender to concentrate on the excellent Allender Band. There is no sonic document of the Gravenhurst four piece; if you weren’t there, you’ve missed it. Sorry..

Nick Talbot now returns to his sonic-folk roots, playing material from all 5 albums so far, accompanied with guitars and various drone-making electrical devices. The audience is invited to shout requests…

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Bombino

Posted: May 24, 2012 in flac, upcoming FLAC uploads
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Bombino was born in Tidene, Niger, a Tuareg encampment outside of Agadez. Following the outbreak of the Tuareg Rebellion in 1990, Bombino, along with his father and grandmother, were forced to flee to neighboring Algeria for safety. By 1997, Bombino had returned to Agadez and began life as a professional musician.

Filmmaker Hisham Mayet managed to track down and record Bombino and his electric band in 2007 during a wedding performance. Those recordings, along with several acoustic performances in the ‘dry guitar’ style, can be heard on the Sublime Frequencies‘ 2009 release, “Group Bombino – Guitars from Agadez, vol. 2.” Later in 2007, tensions grew again in Niger and ultimately erupted into another Tuareg Rebellion. The government, hoping to thwart the rebellion in all its forms, banned guitars for the Tuareg, as the instrument was seen as a symbol of rebellion. Additionally, two of Bombino’s fellow musicians were executed, thus forcing him into exile.

In January 2010 Bombino was able to return to his home in Agadez. So as to celebrate the end of the conflict, a large concert was organized at the base of the Grand Mosque in Agadez, having received the blessing of the Sultan. Bombino and his band played to over a thousand people at the concert, all dancing and celebrating the end of their struggle.

While Bombino lived in exile in Burkina Faso, filmmaker Ron Wyman, having heard cassette recordings of his music, decided to track him down. Wyman encouraged Bombino to properly record his music. Bombino agreed, and the two of them produced an album together in Agadez. The recordings culminated in his album Agadez, released in April, 2011 which debuted at the top of the iTunes World Chart.

 

The Low Anthem

Posted: May 21, 2012 in Americana, flac, FOLK, Singer/Songwriter, upcoming FLAC uploads
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The Low Anthem is an American indie folk band from Providence, Rhode Island, formed in 2006. The band rose to prominence with the re-release of its third studio album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, in 2009, and consists of multi-instrumentalists Ben Knox Miller, Jeff Prystowsky, Jocie Adams, Mike Irwin and Tyler Osborne.

In February 2011, the band released its fourth studio album, Smart Flesh, which was recorded in an abandoned pasta sauce factory.

Ben Knox Miller and Jeffrey Prystowsky met while DJing an overnight jazz show on a Brown University radio station, WBRU. They became friends and teammates for a local wood-bat baseball team called the Providence Grays. Miller and Prystowsky played in various ensembles together ranging from classical and jazz to electronica, and the Low Anthem was formed in 2006. In the fall of 2006, Dan Lefkowitz, a bluesman from Strasburg, Virginia, joined the band and contributed to its evolving brand of songwriting with his song “This God Damn House.” Early in 2007, Lefkowitz left the band to pursue simple living in a yurt in Arkansas. The band became a trio again in late 2007 with the addition of classical composer and clarinetist Jocie Adams, a fellow student and former NASA employee, who joined the band after a late-night recording session for the band’s album What The Crow Brings. She appears on vocals and clarinet on the album’s closing track, “Coal Mountain Lullaby.”

What the Crow Brings

What the Crow Brings was recorded in Miller’s and Prystowsky’s apartments over several months and was then self-released on October 2, 2007. The band took on every aspect of manufacturing the album including dumpster diving for empty cereal boxes to fold into album sleeves, creating the silkscreens for the album art, and hand painting and serial-numbering 600 copies of the album.

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (2008-2009)

The Low Anthem recorded and self-released its third album, Oh, My God, Charlie Darwin on September 2, 2008. The band traveled to Block Island in the middle of winter and spent ten days recording the tracks that would become the album, with engineer and co-producer Jesse Lauter. After the album was completed, the band returned to the island to handpaint and silkscreen the first 2000 copies of the album. The band did a release tour booked by booking agent Jeff “The Scarecrow” Jones.

While touring, the Low Anthem first gained some recognition in the UK when Rough Trade Shops decided to make it an Album of the Month. End of the Road Festival then booked the band and released a 7” single of “Charlie Darwin” coinciding with the celebration of Darwin Day.

The band signed record deals with both Nonesuch Records and the UK label Bella Union and both rereleased Oh, My God, Charlie Darwin after Bob Ludwig re-mastered the disc. There was new artwork and the track order was resequenced.

In the summer of 2009, the band played US festivals Bonnaroo, Lollapalloza, the Newport Folk Festival, and Austin City Limits. In addition to headlining shows throughout Europe, The Low Anthem also played Glastonbury, Hyde Park Calling, Wireless, and End of the Road Festivals in the UK.

In November, The Low Anthem released its debut music video for Charlie Darwin, a claymation work by Glenn Taunton and Simon Taffe. On November 20, 2009, The Low Anthem made its television debut on Later… with Jools Holland.During its November 2009 tour in Europe, Mat Davidson, an old friend and multi-instrumentalist, joined the band.

The beginning of 2010 saw the band’s first US television appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, where it performed “Charlie Darwin”, and a short tour in Europe, including its biggest headlining show at Shepherds Bush Empire. The band returned to the US to support The Avett Brothers and then completed its first headline tour of the USA.

Smart Flesh (2009-2012)

From December 2009 until February 2010, the band recorded its fourth album, Smart Flesh, in the abandoned Porino’s pasta sauce factory in Central Falls, RI. The album was engineered by Jesse Lauter and mixed by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes). The album was released February 22, 2011. The band released “Ghost Woman Blues”, the first song on the record as a free download in December on its Web site. The band appeared again on The Late Show with David Letterman on January 12, 2011, performing “Ghost Woman Blues.”

Mat Davidson played his last show with the band on July 9, 2011 in Quebec and has since been replaced by multi-instrumentalist Mike Irwin. Upon Davidson’s exit, the band noted, “He is a friend, an incredible musician, and we will all miss him dearly.” In December 2011, the band added Tyler Osborne to its line-up, stating on its official website, “Our newest Low Anthem member joined us earlier last week at 6:55 PM in Providence, Rhode Island after an eleven-hour pilgrimage from his hometown of Roanoke, Virginia. His name, already given, is Tyler Osborne, and he’s as good as they come, a great multi-talented musician, and a great guy. Osborne’s first shows with the band were in Canada, whilst the band supported City & Colour.

On December 20, 2011, the band released an album for free under the alter-ego Snake Wagon, entitled Have Fun With Snake Wagon. The album was recorded during the same sessions as Smart Flesh.

The band recently announced plans for a hiatus from touring following its current commitments. An announcement on the band’s official website stated, “We know the Darwin/Smart Flesh material inside and out. [...] Maybe some artists reach this point and become safer, more refined, imitations of themselves. We’re not interested. So, we’ve decided that this upcoming tour will be the last tour of the chapter. The last tour devoted to this material, this incarnation. A final hurrah. A sweet goodbye. The refined completion of three years of work. It’s anything you want it to be, but it will be the last for a while. It’s not the end. There is no end. But it’s the last one for a while. We have too many unfulfilled ideas in the works to stay out on the road. We’ve got 40+ new songs in the wings. Two very different albums to record. Blueprints for a handful of electro-light sculptures. But it’s going to take some time back home, to turn the page and build a new sound world. To burn the furniture.”

Arcadia soundtrack (2012)

On February 22, 2012, the band announced that they had recorded a soundtrack album for the forthcoming film, Arcadia. The band’s website stated, “The soundtrack is self-engineered and was recorded in a week. It consists of a few composed songs and harvested sections of epic improvised sessions. It was a new process for us.”

SXSW 2012

On March 16, 2012, the band opened for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Moody Theatre in Austin, Texas. They also joined him onstage, along with Tom Morello, Jimmy Cliff, Eric Burdon, members of Arcade Fire, Joe Ely, and Alejandro Escovedo, for the show’s finale cover of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”

Shannon Stephens

Posted: May 21, 2012 in Americana, flac, Singer/Songwriter, upcoming FLAC uploads
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A natural at crafting comforting, acoustic-based folk songs, indie songwriter Shannon Stephens started her career in the ’90s while she attended Hope College in Michigan. After getting her feet wet as the leader of Marzuki — a folky group whose members included Matt Haseltine, Jamie Kempkers, and a young Sufjan Stevens — she began pursuing a solo career in 1999, with her former bandmates all launching their own projects as well. While Stevens made his solo debut with 2000′s Sun Came — the first album in his long, illustrious discography of chamber pop records — Stephens finished Shannon Stephens, her self-titled debut. The album was largely ignored upon its release, however.

As Sufjan Stevens became a household name in the indie community, Shannon Stephens became a wife and a mother in Seattle, and she left music far behind for the majority of the decade. Her music wasn’t forgotten, though; Paste Magazine championed her solo debut in a blog post entitled Five Amazing Albums in My iTunes You’ve Never Heard Of, and Bonnie “Prince” Billy covered one of her songs on his 2008 album Lie Down in the Light. The following year, Stephens re-emerged from the Seattle underground to release her second album, The Breadwinner, on Stevens’ own label, Asthmatic Kitty. One year after that, Asthmatic Kitty reissued her long-lost debut album, this time to a more appreciative audience. Stephens’ third studio outing, Pull It Together, arrived in 2012 and featured a duet with Bonnie “Prince” Billy.

 

 

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Lee Ranaldo

Posted: May 20, 2012 in flac, upcoming FLAC uploads
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Lee Ranaldo, co-founder of avant-garde rock group Sonic Youth, was born in 1956 in East Norwich, New York. In addition to constant touring with Sonic Youth, Ranaldo has been extremely active in the New York music scene for the past 30 years, recording and collaborating with numerous acts, producing discs, and publishing several books of poetry and journal entries.

Ranaldo attended SUNY Binghamton in Binghamton, New York, where he played in an experimental punk outfit called the Fluks (named after the Dadaist art movement, Fluxus). His early influences include many psychedelic California bands from the late ’60s, including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Hot Tuna, as well as early New York City punk units like the Ramones, Television, and Talking Heads.

After moving to New York in 1979, Ranaldo briefly attempted to revive the Fluks before playing in a series of acts including Rhys Chatham and Plus Instruments (with whom he recorded an LP in 1982). Through Chatham, Ranaldo met the charismatic composer Glenn Branca, who created avant-garde pieces for electric guitar ensembles. Through the burbling downtown no wave scene of the early ’80s, Ranaldo met future Sonic Youth bandmates Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon.

Throughout the ’80s, the band worked hard to sustain themselves, recording and touring constantly. The early years of the band are documented in a book of road journals written by Ranaldo and published by Soft Skull Press in the mid-’90s. In 1987, he released his first solo album, From Here to Infinity, on SST Records, a vinyl release with locking grooves at the end of each track.

By the early ’90s, after the completion and subsequent canonization of their seminal Daydream Nation (and probably partially by dint of sheer survival), Sonic Youth were looked up to as elders in the fledgling alternative music scene, acting as mentors to dozens of younger bands (including Nirvana). In this role, Ranaldo has produced albums for Babes in Toyland, You Am I, Deity Guns, and others.

Ranaldo’s role in the ever-experimental Sonic Youth has been an important one, acting as a textural axis for Gordon and Moore. Though he typically only contributed a handful of songs to each Sonic Youth recording, Ranaldo quickly developed his own songwriting style — throbbing beats topped with beat-influenced, half-spoken/half-sung poetry delivered in Ranaldo’s reassuring, gently confident voice, such as “Eric’s Trip” on Daydream Nation and the title track off of 1999′s NYC Ghosts & Flowers.

In addition to releasing a book of his poetry (also published by Soft Skull Press), Ranaldo has also edited a volume of tour journals from the 1995 Lollapalooza Tour written by Moore, Beck, Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement), Courtney Love, and others. Ranaldo also has an ongoing collaboration with jazz drummer William Hooker. The two create dissonant music — Hooker on drums, Ranaldo on modified guitars, synthesizers, and other electronics — while taking turns reading and improvising poetry. These collaborations include 1998′s heavily edited live album Clouds as well as 2005′s Music for Stage and Screen, which featured excerpts of a score Ranaldo produced for Dania Saragovia’s film Jealousy, as well as music for plays by Gil Kofman and Michele Salimbeni. Ranaldo continued to collaborate throughout the 2000s with avant luminaries, as on Christian Marclay: Graffiti Composition, which also featured Elliott Sharp and Vernon Reid, and also released solo forays into the fringes of guitar work while also working with Sonic Youth. When that band moved to Matador Records to release The Eternal, Ranaldo also signed on as a solo artist. His debut album for the label, Between the Times and the Tides, featured familiar faces such as Alan Licht, Nels Cline, Steve Shelley, and Jim O’Rourke, and arrived in March 2012.

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Donis

Posted: May 17, 2012 in flac, FOLK, upcoming FLAC uploads
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Donis is a unique  project from Klaipėda, Lithuania (a harbour city of Western Lithuania on the Baltic Sea), masterminded by a young talented multi-instrumentalist,Donatas Bielkauskas. The name of the project truly corresponds to the shortened form of artist first name.
The most unusual and characteristic feature of his music is an idiosyncratic blend of the ancient  and contemporary arrangements. Donis’ compositions are hard grooving, subtly refined and solid sounding. His most outstanding accomplishment to date is the album Bitė Lingo, based on Lithuanian historic and war songs and recorded with singer Rasa Serra and Kuršių Ainiai ensemble. The most recent Donis’ production Alexandreia reveals imaginary spirit of antiquity, that results in tranquil, transparent and peruasive ambient stream. Distinguished for originality and versatility, Donis’ output also includes music for theatre and film. It has been presented at a number of alternative art festivals, art galleries and international culture events. Text: Ugnius Liogė

Being one of the main project of the Lithuanian modern scene, Donis is mostly known as creator of,  and  music, proud member ofWejdas, Notanga, D.N.S. and other projects. Donis is also hardly experimenting in the fields of awry  music,  and straight .

Alina Orlova

Posted: May 14, 2012 in flac, Singer/Songwriter, upcoming FLAC uploads
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Alina Orlova is the Lithuanian singer, songwriter and artist, who sings in Lithuanian, English and Russian. Orlova’s indie fame in Lithuania started with her early recordings on the Internet. “At first, I performed alone, just piano and voice, but when I uploaded my songs, people got interested and started to invite me to play small concerts. I played in a cafe where I worked and other small places, and people came even without any advertising,” said Orlova. “I started to get offers from labels, but did not want to hurry. Then I found musicians who I thought were right, and we recorded the album. Then I got a band that I perform with now, and I am very glad because I had always been afraid that I would not be able to explain to musicians or producers what I wanted, that we would fail to come to find a common language, but it all worked out.”
Orlova, who compares her sound to “someone’s crying behind a wall” on her MySpace page, cites Nick Cave, Lou Reed, Talking Heads and David Bowie as her favorite singers.”I prefer male vocals, for some reason,” she said. “But I like Liz Frazer of Cocteau Twins and (U.S. female duo) Coco Rosie. I like strange female vocals, but listen more to male (vocals).”
Orlova was born Alina Orlovskaya in the town of Visaginas, built on the Visaginas Lake for workers at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in 1975. “It drew specialists from all over the Soviet Union, and it has remained very Russian and very different from the rest of Lithuania,” said Orlova, whose mother was born in Voronezh and met her Lithuania-born, Polish father in Kazakhstan before moving to Lithuania. “They moved to Lithuania, because it is in the Baltics, and everything is beautiful and good here,” she said. Despite the proximity of the nuclear plant, the area boasts beautiful natural surroundings of lakes and pine forests, prompting Orlova to cite “birds” as her influence on her MySpace page.
Although five out of seven schools in town were Russian, Orlova’s parents, who did not speak Lithuanian, sent her and her brother to a Lithuanian one, she said, hence her command of both languages. While in school, Orlova also took classes in piano and art. “I must have had a need for writing songs. I started to compose some songs and lyrics when I was very young,” she said. “It was very naive and funny in the beginning, but then I grew older and something serious started to come out of it, and it took a distinct form.”
Orlova’s debut album, recorded over eight months and released in January (2008), is titled “Laukinis Šuo Dingo” or “The Wild Dog Dingo,” named after a Russian book for school children about innocent teenage love. “I remember this book very vaguely,” she said, “It did not impress me greatly, but the title has stayed.”
Although she sings mostly in Lithuanian, Orlova also writes songs in English and Russian. She says the Lithuanian audiences have no problem listening to her Russian songs, despite the political conflicts between the two countries. “I know that many young people listen to the Russian songs without understanding the words and react normally. There is no problem with it.”
Alina has been living in Vilnius since she graduated from high school. Today, having recorded her debut album, Alina Orlova performs on some of the best stages in Lithuania and goes on tour to places like Liverpool, London and Moscow.

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