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

Yeah man that Pelt album is great!

I have that but never clicked w/it, will try again

I looove Ayahuasca and Empty Bell

Definitely a fan of both of those too sleeve, but yeah give "pearls from the river" another shot. Maybe doesn't hit the weirdo highs as much as "Ayahuasca" or some other tracks, but really dig "Road To Catawba". Any folks looking to do some digging in can hear some here:

http://www.vhfrecords.com/catalog/pelt-pearls-from-the-river-cd-vhf76

yea i like those other two albums a lot, though i've always found 'pearls' more immediately accessible and engrossing than 'ayahuasca', if due to nothing else than its length tbh, 2 hours is a long record! i definitely need to listen to ayahuasca more.

i think the 2nd and 3rd tracks of 'pearls are especially spectacular - the title track just maintains such a wonderful tension in its drone with all this sadness and fear just simmering throughout, it's really great. 'road to catawba' is just so reflective and peaceful and becomes really joyful at the end, the guitar just interacting with the drone just wonderfully

Yep

those pelt records are kind of perfect music.
kind of on topic, here's the official word on the upcoming gunn/black twig pickers LP
Steve Gunn and The Black Twig Pickers are key figures in the current resurgence of American traditional and folk music. Gunn’s songwriting and inventive guitar playing are driven by his restless mind, having released 9 solo and collaborative albums and appeared as a guest on nearly as many since his debut in 2007. The Black Twig Pickers play a fervent form of traditional music from their Appalachian homeland. The group performs often forgotten traditional songs, especially from their Virginia stomping-ground, creating a living history of old time music. They also have an ongoing residency at the legendary Floyd Country Store. Their individual works have received extensive praise from Rolling Stone, NPR, the BBC, Mojo, Uncut, Maverick, Elmore, and Pitchfork. Seasonal Hire, their first full-length collaborative release, combines Gunn’s circular, meditative guitar playing with the Twigs’ energetic mastery of old time instrumentation in a purely acoustic environment resulting in a warm,
energetic, and exceptional album.

Seasonal Hire collects four original tunes and one traditional piece, with Gunn and The Black Twig Pickers’ Mike Gangloff and Sally Anne Morgan all taking turns with lead vocal and songwriting. Like all of the Twigs’ albums, it was recorded live, without overdubs or amplification. Gunn fell right in with this aesthetic and threw down guitar parts like he’d been sparring with banjos and fiddles for years. The majority of the album was recorded at Joseph Dejarnette’s Studio 808a in rural Topeco, Virgina, where Gunn and Gangloff recorded Melodies for a Savage Fix, an improvisational masterpiece of pan-cultural meditations. Echoes of Melodies can be heard on Seasonal Hire’s titular b-side, an extended, beautiful ramble equally indebted to old time music and Indian ragas. Additional recording was done closer to Gunn’s New York home at the famed Black Dirt Studios. Black Dirt has been the home for many groundbreaking records by artists such as Charlie Parr, Jack Rose, Bill Orcutt, Expo 70,
and Tom Carter. The album was mastered by Patrick Klem. Seasonal Hire shows the impressive range of some of the most talented and imaginative musicians that have made a name for themselves experimenting in folk forms today.

Steve Gunn and the Black Twig Pickers will continue to perform throughout 2015, and hope to carve out time for some collaborative tour dates. Nathan Bowles of the Twigs is currently on tour with Steve Gunn as his drummer and banjo player.

Oh man, definitely looking forward to this but would love to see a live incarnation!

^^ sounds great

love pearls on the river. that, effigy, and stone for... have been my main pelt listening. suppose i've gotta dig into ayahuasca next. feel like i need to listen to those records in an empty house on a quiet afternoon.

marcus from DFBM posted this on FB today, pretty cool spin on this style (a lot of chops on display, but always in the service of the song):

https://samuelgrayedmondson.bandcamp.com/album/suite

pelt fans will be very pleased with the 16-minute title track from this gunn/pickers LP.

Nice! I imagine that this record will be pretty close to the Gunn/Pickers Natch stuff, and if so I am gonna be happy indeed.

pearls from the river is close to a jack rose album but ayahuasca is much 'heavier'/hard drone, love them both though

another good player apparently living in the same city as me & global! followed me on soundcloud and i followed back, v stately i like this

http://soundcloud.com/marcus_eads/snowsquall

yes those pelt albums are perfect music. i find them so deeply spiritual. i think i am gonna burn some incense tonight and put on ayahuasca, lol, light some candles! my son's asleep and my wife's at work. i need that right now. you really do need a quiet house for this kind of droney stuff, or else a good long walk.

i had this amazing commute to work when i first got into all this post-fahey stuff. rose, pelt, basho-junghans. it was this perfect 30 minute walk along a reservoir, in the middle of winter everything would freeze over and it was so perfect to put on these sparse reflective drones and take a good walk.

where to start w/pelt?

you could jump right in w/ ayahuasca, but as mentioned above i did find pearls from the river an easier entry point. you listen to a ton of this kind of music though so ayahuasca might not seem overwhelming to you.

you know who i have really been digging and find a wonderful complement to 'pearls from the river' and other pelt (and no doubt a major inspiration for those albums)? zia mohuiddin dagar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zia_Mohiuddin_Dagar

cool thx marcos

only have empty bell ringing in the sky but it's very awesome and droney! ashamed to say the one time i saw a jack rose lp in a shop i didn't pick it up, think it was kensington blues (regrets)

you know who i have really been digging and find a wonderful complement to 'pearls from the river' and other pelt (and no doubt a major inspiration for those albums)? zia mohuiddin dagar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zia_Mohiuddin_Dagar

― marcos, Thursday, January 8, 2015 7:38 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

second this recommendation, enthusiastically.

Yeah! Any recorded material from the Dagar family is a must. The entire dhrupad facet of raga playing is probably the most referenced style in the experimental community. Slow, loooong alaps, really great stuff.

^^ yeah think someone (musta been marcos) in previous thread recommended him and it's amazing stuff. thanks for the reminder! also something i wanna listen to when nobody is around, just turn it up and zone out kinda

Slow, loooong alaps
this sounds very appealing but what does it mean? real q.

If you want to know what alaap means, not only will the glossary offer a simple definition, it will also play a little something for you.
INDIA TODAY (1997)

(that's the best thing my google-fu could conjur, i think it's just a word for an instrumental indian classical piece?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alap

complicated! but basically:

the opening section of a typical North Indian classical performance. It is a form of melodic improvisation that introduces and develops a raga.

and yes i definitely feel like those zia mohuiddin dagar ragas just develop so wonderfully slowly

Could be a great thread focused on music that shows this influence. As Neal astutely points out: "The entire dhrupad facet of raga playing is probably the most referenced style in the experimental community". There are whole bands who kind of sit in that territory for large chunks of time, Pelt certainly being one of them.

ILX Nu-Raga 2015

are we talking about the kidn of thing that's happening on pelt's road to catawba?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5GS9dule1o

aw shit sorry for the embed...

No big deal, and yeah, that whole searching lead-up thing is pretty much it.

how do you just post a youtube link again? i thought having the s in the https did it ...?

haha i know i feel like it took be so long to figure out how to embed but now i just want to link and i can't remember how to do it

Hit the "Show Formatting Help" link below, but you can simply bookend the links with ... to provide them directly.

Hah! It didn't display the text/code, just the ellipsis representing "content", sorry. There are url tags that allow you to post a linkable url in the text, so yeah, hit the "Show Formatting Help" link and it'll show you the options.

you can also test yr posts out over on the HTML Playground board, or here:

I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO PUT THIS SO I'M PUTTING IT HERE

Nathan Bowles live on WTJU right now (with Elisa Ambrogio as well). Show will be archived for a couple weeks but tune in now if you can:

http://www.wtju.net/

thx for the heads up. tuning in...

Man, so psyched for the Elisa/Nathan/Chris Forsyth & Solar Motel Band show tonight. Holy crap.

have fun, totally jealous

Oh man, should be a blast. Hopefully my taping buddy will be there with his A+ game in tow!

ohh yes please

I will report back and try to get the relevant parties to pony up any recordings if they happen, there is a pretty high probability it'll happen.

u wouldn't happen to have a recording of the Michael Hurley show at Twisted Branch, would you? it was a while ago...

Nah, I do not. When was it? It is possible my buddy was there, but the only Hurley I remember was in like 1999 at The Prism. I must have been out of town (or living somewhere else) when that happened. I can check with my buddy though.

thanks! always looking for Hurley boots

fyi on embedding

HTTP: will embed video
HTTPS: will embed video

WWW (without http): will not embed video
NO URL PREFIX AT ALL (youtube.com/x): will not embed video

Based on some testing I did a few weeks back, these were the results. Best bet for me was to not any reference http(s) at all.

Sorry that I slept on those responses, gonna head back to the raga talk real quick --

Sleeve got it down in regards to what the alap of a raga is. The improvised 'intro' that is explored before to the performer heads into the 'composed' section of the piece. I put composed in quotes bc the latter half of a raga is still a variation of improvisation. An alap is much more clear in instrumental pieces. If percussion is used, the alap ends when the tabla starts to kick in. Dhrupad is all vocal, and is known for being incredibly slow. So slow that it was kinda lauded. Which I didn't see until reading that ZM Dagar wiki marcos posted above. ZM's son said "Dhrupad? Who'll listen? Rudra veena? Play something else. Long alaaps? So boring!"

The Dagar family's alap performances feel pretty monochromatic, there isn't tons of drastic changes in pitch. Slightly down a half note, slight up a half note, over and over. There's a couple instances where Jack Rose references loving the Dagar's, so that style of raga seems particularly influential to the direction of Pelt and similar groups.

There is quite a variation in how ragas are played, I didn't really discover the Dagar type stuff until after listening to Ali Akbar Khan and similar instrumental performers. I uploaded to YouTube a Dagar alap from this really great comprehensive overview of 1950's classical Indian music. This 3LP boxset that is apparently the first official release to reach serious western audiences, was first put out in 1955.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=unpzOat1JsA
The rest of the boxset is here:
http://broadcastsfrompoorfarm.tumblr.com/post/32723337445

Oh wait :)
I thought "to laud" meant to disapprove of.

That's very informative and thorough -- thank you!!