ILX Gonna Shine in My Backdoor Someday (new post-Fahey folk for ppl posting in Takoma/Tompkins Square threads Pt II)

I mean he certainly could return to it at any point, he put this out early last year:

https://threelobed.bandcamp.com/album/lonesome-weary-blues

In my opinion his latest record succeeds at what it is doing very well, but I mean it is all relative. I just admire his ability to tie "place" and history and topical ideas into instrumental music in deeply personal ways. Maybe some people do one particular side of it better or are more accomplished at the technical aspects, but I find it really impressive how much he puts into this current one.

I took a little skip through the new one, it seems more my cup of tea— when last year's record came out and I read a description, i was hoping it would feel like the Sacred Harp stuff, but unlike the latter, I couldn't just have it come on in the car and want to enter into it...new one seems more promising.

this seems relevant;
https://n-t-s.bandcamp.com/album/european-primitive-guitar-1974-1987

oh wow that looks interesting

crossposting from the ambient thread, this is a 90-minute (!) tape of Arvo Part pieces transcribed for solo guitar, I find it bewitching

https://cosimapitz.bandcamp.com/album/wherever-i-go

Latest Lake Mary is flat-out gorgeous: https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/album/its-okay-you-can-open-your-eyes-now

ohhhhh yeah. chaz is always pretty great — might be a little underrated.

wow that's great, healing

Seems to be the only thread in which Kayla Cohen has been mentioned before, so I'll throw it here - the new Itasca album is absolutely gorgeous, I love it.

yes! one of the best of the year

this Itasca record is beautiful, thanks for the recommendation

from Frag City News--adjust your shades accordingly:

Lee Underwood’s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley’s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music — but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus, California Sigh, has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! On June 28, Drag City is excited to present California Sigh, fully remastered for vinyl and digital platforms. With today’s announcement is the title track, “California Sigh”.
Lee Underwood is usually mentioned first as Tim Buckley’s stalwart and lead guitarist — inspiring, accompanying and being inspired by Buckley through the late 60s and early 70s — as well as the author of Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered. If, like us, you ever wondered what became of that trippy picker from those Buckley records, then you too missed California Sigh when it first appeared in 1988: a self-released meditative cassette and a tranquil acoustic journey that was almost too ahead of its time. In the late 80s, Lee found himself increasingly interested in the psycho-spiritual, reading the works of Osho and Alan Watts and listening to New Age greats like Paul Winter, Steve Roach, and Brian Eno. California Sigh reflects these curiosities, along with the musical joys Underwood found surrounded in nature with the love of his life, Sonia Crespi. The two took frequent trips to the Southern Colorado mountains, enveloped in a soundscape of trickling streams, coyotes howling in the night, and the silence of stars — inspiring the serene pool of field recordings sprawling across California Sigh.

The lead single and title track, “California Sigh”, blows straight from those Southern Rockies. Strumming a cleansing spiritual path through a swirling gust of wind, Lee deploys crystalline figuration in a synth-swept landscape, ebbing and flowing with bold flourishes and picked harmonics as the song stirs. “California Sigh” reveals Lee’s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence.

California Sigh was co-produced by Lee Underwood and the aforementioned Steve Roach, a trailblazer in the New Age realm. The playing of Chas Smith and Kevin Braheny Fortune, on pedal steel and soprano sax respectively, lend additional colors to Lee’s music on several songs, but it is largely the soulful depth of Lee’s guitar figures, limned by Steve’s synthesizers, that elevate Lee’s lovely cycle of songs. California Sigh is “dedicated with love and respect” by Lee to his late wife, Sonia, whose warmth and inspiration shines through all the material.

Now, 35 years later, the air around the instruments and the full sonic impact of California Sigh — alternately gentle and mighty, like the natural world that inspired it — is magnified incomparably. Train your ears on the meditations of California Sigh come June 28, 2024!
Listen to title Track "California Sigh" https://lnk.to/californiasigh
Lee Underwood

Drag City: https://www.dragcity.com/artists/lee-underwood

Bandcamp: https://leeunderwood.bandcamp.com/album/california-sigh

Pre-order / Pre-save California Sigh: lnk.to/californiasigh
For more information and interview requests, please contact:

bailey at dragcity dot com

Sorry, *Drag* City News, not "Frag," since this ain't the Vietnam War.

this sounds really promising! thanks for posting

reminds me a bit of george cromarty

tangentially related to the thread but pedal steel player Chas Smith
who is on that California Sigh record, just passed away a couple days ago.
this is a good interview with him:
https://www.fretboardjournal.com/features/steel-legend-chas-smith-remembered/

yeah he has a lovely 10" record I was listening to yesterday

https://coldbluemusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-complete-10-inch-series-from-cold-blue-cold-blue-music-daniel-lentz-peter-garland-chas-smith-michael-jon-fink-rick-cox-barney-childs-read-miller

Thanks! Pedal steel is still such a minority niche, but at least we've got Dave Easley, Susan Alcorn, Greg Liesz, and records like this.
More upcoming from Drag City

:SHACKLETON & SIX ORGANS ALIGN

What might appear to be the most unlikely collaboration of 2024 proves also to be one of the most invigorating listens of the year! Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance are in full aural/metaphysical alignment on Jinxed by Being: a no-brainer fusion of Shackleton’s bass heavy cosmic dread and Six Organs’ ritual folksong, out June 28.

Longtime listeners know that both Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance have been unafraid to pursue their muse into any and all encroaching depth of darkness or outer boundary of potential dissonance. They also share that ol’ maverick psychedelic ritual transcendental music vibe, don’t they? And a fascination with repetition and cycles. And a mutual inspiration drawn from alternative tunings and literature… all this considered, it’s been basically inevitable that Ben Chasny and Sam Shackleton would work together. Jinxed by Being finds Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance delighting in this synthesis, reveling in unique sonic textures, esoteric deliveries, and new reinventions. Sam’s vocals — a rare occurrence — find melody with Ben’s on several tracks; elsewhere on the record, drum samples by Chasny (recorded in Six Organs’ embryonic stage) are re-sequenced anew by Shackleton.

The first single, “Stages of Capitulation”, captures Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance’s timely meeting in a marvelously organic playground of world beats, with acid guitar and deep bass oozing throughout. As they chant an arcane ritual, a widescreen stereo image of their exotic environs expands into a mix alive with details, flashing from left to right and back again. Chasny’s music video provides a potent incense to burn through the track’s seven-minute runtime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ERSbUwGWT4

Against the categorization of perceived genre rather than intention, encounters like Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance may never have found themselves sitting next to each other, beyond alphabets and other institutional organizing principles. Rearrange your libraries (vinyl and streaming, that is) on June 28, 2024 — or you might miss getting Jinxed by Being!