Revolt of the ILX Brigade: New Post-Fahey Folk For PPL that post in the Takoma & Tompkin's Square Threads

ha! i remember them! totally accurate description. i copied some album of theirs on the same cd as the cat power covers album, so i always put them together in my mind even though they're not related at all
it veered a little toward syrupy rather than freaky but i remember liking it alright

i had atardecer

aptly named imo

atardecer is my fave FODM album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTrgdYLzOoI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJAgnc5dEww

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9qRieKU0DE

xpost!

they're a bit loungey too, which i like. i have their debut lp on v1ny1

love friends of dean martinez, that's basically what I want from calexico...
some of you might like the new date palms record which is kinda slo-mo desert drone raga.
https://soundcloud.com/thrilljockey/date-palms-yuba-reprise

To all, I'd recommend of Calexico:

My favorite studio LP:

"Hot Rail"

The recently reissued tour only records:

"Travelall"
"Aerocalexico"
"The Book & the Canal"

I'll look for some youtubes in a bit... pretty busy atm

Of this vibe generally:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcE2a0dki-0

dunno if we've mentioned her on this thread but Marissa Anderson has a new one out this month -- sounding quite good
http://marisaanderson.bandcamp.com/album/mercury

Okay, so a year or two ago I remember hearing a story on NPR about some guitarist who was way into playing jazz, and then he like lost a couple fingers, and discovered Fahey, and then embarked on a Neo-American-Primitive career? Anybody know who this was? Not to toot our own horn here but if he were any good he'd probably have been mentioned thus far, but was interesting enough I'd like to check him out in retrospect. I guess they didn't play too many of his tunes on the show, maybe he is awesome, I dunno. Interesting thought that you revert to Faheystyle only after losing some fingers, ha

i just wanted to say that c joynes is really, really good imo

Pleased as punch to discover William Tyler. Will be ordering both albums this weekend.

(he's also a Durutti Column fan! Yay!)

So, what's the ILM verdict on this Scott Key thing? I'm interested, but there aren't any Youtube clips or anything, and with shipping, the LP is like $26, so, err...convince me I need this album.

It's a fine record but it's not some transcendental experience or anything. Some of the songs with vocals are a bit goofy IIRC. It's got its own vibe, like it's not a serious guitar composition record imo but it's also not a nostalgia-fest. It's got a kind of hallucinatory, meandering vibe that I found suitable for long, hot summer days... I should re-listen to it really. I prob haven't pulled it out in a few years. I think he's got more than one record, but "The Forest And The Sea" is the only one I have

okay, jamming it now, i forgot just how FULL THROTTLE this record opens. dude is playing like he's amped up on that methamphetamine sheeit.

second track dials it back to a more lyrical approach with droning bass pluckin'

my memory of the second side being better than the first is validated. the pieces are longer and given more space to develop. they also DO feel more like 'serious compositions' than some of the jams on the first side. His bottleneck work is nice, especially at the end of the last piece. I don't know enough about guitar playing to describe a lot of this stuff properly. but when he takes things a bit slower it works better for me. some of his quick bottleneck stuff is just too busy for me to enjoy. it's exciting, in a way, but there isn't much that sticks with me -- if your knowledge of guitar technique is better than mine (which it almost definitely is) then you may hear something in it that i don't.

Thanks Ian - good review. This certainly doesn't sound like an essential $26 purchase for a man without any real income this summer. I guess I was expecting (hoping for?) more of a Twilight peaks sorta vibe?

nice steve gunn interview/overview

http://blurtonline.com/feature/gunn-control-steve-gunn/

i am always hoping for a twilight peaks vibe.

"The late Jack Rose, whose solo guitar pieces were instrumental in establishing the practice as a prominent form" < what would jack rose say about his founding role in the previously unestablished field of playing an acoustic guitar solo?

generally the quality of criticism & writing about solo guitar music is pretty terrible, & fahey (&now jack mb) is an eminent & recognisable enough figure that his name getting thrown around loosely is an inevitability. i don't think fahey has much to do w/ a lot of stuff in this thread tho, & the extent to which his name is invoked in interviews just for guitarists to go "yeah, i don't know that much of his stuff" is indicative of some collective cognitive failing when faced w/ a solo guitarist.

as has been stated, some of the stuff in here largely borrows more from [drab&twee] indie Americana & only intersects w/ takoma-ish music in a p trivial way. i wld prefer much more copying of john fahey tbh. fahey & basho picked up things from a huge range of ppl & were extremely ambitious copyists, tho not in a 'folk music' way - strongly disagree w/ global tetra here. all styles are vernaculars, but solo acoustic guitar of this ilk is primarily the domain of solitary young men w/ records, & is less Folk than bassline house, reggaeton, or any other style of music that necessitates leaving the house.

anyway, on its own merits, a lot of this stuff is too vague & formless for me, & when writers invoke Americana, or Folk, or talk about how Old the music sounds or w/e it just feels like a branding enterprise making ppl want to feel like they're sat on a porch casually spilling whisky into their voluptuous beard. hokey mountain man mystique can be fun to play around w/ but it's not True in any sense i recognise. i approve of deceiving yr audience, but not yrself.

was listening to this radio interview w/ basho again today & swooning as he talks about his "japanese period", his "amerindian period, his "veyr long hindu period" & his new "persian period". not sure if this has been posted before actually, but w/e, it's fabulous. shame about the piano playing. http://archive.org/details/OTG_1974_11_06

When I saw Tyler he told anecdotes about listening to the Bellamy Brothers in his ipod and fast food restaurants, he's hardly portraying himself as a mountain man

Yeah, WT is a pretty openly cosmopolitan dude. And I've never seen him with facial hair of any kind.

Ditto most of these guys. I wonder, ogmor, who you're classifying as a pretend mountain man? Because, in my experience, some of these guitar dudes can be pretty hermetic (Scott Tuma comes to mind), but not in the way you're describing. I'm mostly just curious, because I think the context you're describing is mostly an illusion on the part of the listener. A lot of the guys we're talking about in this thread are ex-punks, indie refugees, and citified record nerds, many of whom probably couldn't bait a fishhook. Is this, perhaps, a case of the 'European gaze?'

xp that was re: collective cognitive failing viz all this stuff rather than self-presentation. otoh, his track names - missionary ridge, green pastures, signal mountain, cadillac desert - bespeak a p boring approach to musical psychogeography. mb if he names a song after kfc ppl will stop pinning their sentimental dreck narratives on him & or mention fahey in interviews.

edd hurt makes a mountain man out of daniel bachman in this piece > http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashvillecream/archives/2012/11/26/daniel-bachman-the-cream-interview - bachman might be a 21st century guy, leading a fast-paced life, but he's in touch w/ the past, & definitely part of the venerable unique takoma tradition of playing music that makes people feel emotions of some kind. in hurt's defence though, bachman is literally standing on a porch on his album cover, making the narrative difficult to resist.

i am going to see bachman tmw so i can personally assess these claims & mb listen to his playing.

You must be fun to party with

lol, yeah, i'd relax a little bit about the *presentation* of this stuff. no one's going nuts claiming that this stuff is *MORE AUTHENTIC AND REAL* than anything else. there's no Takoma-ist movement happening. we're talking about, what two dozen people, three dozen playing this music seriously? c'mon, writers (including me) are just bullshitting, just trying to come up with a way to say, hey, i like how this sounds.

I don't even really expect a lot of people working on this space to necessarily innovate or scale the heights of fahey or bashing or w/e but I think that in this type of music each player has a certain personality or personal quirks to how they play and I enjoy hearing how different people approach things differently within a fairly narrow genre

Yeah, I think there is a lot of projection on the parts of writers and listeners surrounding this stuff, and necessarily so in a lot of respects. There are only so many ways to frame a single person and (mostly) a single guitar. In the case of a guy like Bachman, he really is from Virginia and sits on porches and plays shows on porches and is just playing all the time, whether there or on the road, so I don't think it is a stretch or contrived that this stuff gets included in the surrounding press and imagery, but I for one didn't think that that Edd Hurt piece suggested ""Mountain Man" at all, but hell, I live in Virginia so what do I know.

Ogmor, as far as Bachman's playing goes, the tape with Ian McColm on Feeding Tube is NOT typical finger-picking at all. It is very much an improv record (McColm plays mostly drums/percussion on it) and Bachman does a lot of droning/textural/more "out" stuff that is quite different from the solo stuff he has become known for. You may not see much of this at the show, but he does have more interests/range than his more well-known records would suggest (though you may find it just as un-moving as some of his other stuff, who knows?).

i doubt bachman could even grow a beard tbh

i'm from minnesota and i sat on my porch last night! i didn't play guitar tho i just drank a beer

Hah yeah, Bachman is so young man. I tried enjoying my porch while I could, but mosquito season is here and it's pretty brutal.

Wanna add that I got to see Ian McColm play solo when he toured with D. Bachman, and he was really good too. He is even younger than Bachman, but he did a great solo-percussion/drone set (he had mics on some of the drums and did some extended technique and tuned metal stuff that got amplified and pretty cool ways), I recommend seeing him. Really nice but serious about playing, he might do some pretty great shit down the line. I guess he does do improv electric guitar stuff (droney and pretty), but his drumming/percussion stuff interests me a lot more.

thought edd's bachman interview was great, did not see any real problem with it. then again, i don't think there's anything horribly wrong w/ bringing fahey into the conversation w/ this stuff, as long as it's not totally overdone/stated. it's not like someone comparing everything remotely rock n roll to elvis or something. it's a niche, maybe w/ a lot of room for various styles/approaches, but a niche nonetheless.

anyhoo, this stuff probably belongs more on the psych thread, but since he's been mentioned (And since he's on one of the imaginational comps), the recordings from chris forsyth's recent gigs have been amaaaaaaazing. http://snd.sc/13SUmkW

Yeah, was going to mention that Chris Forsyth action, I love it. It definitely veers away from this stuff in ways some of his recent records haven't (i.e., full band rock and roll). Feel like campaigning for it with all of my old Deadhead friends, as it's far more agreeable (and great) than most of the lame jam-band shit that a lot of them still listen to. Some really nice guitar playing for sure, and within a context that I can totally appreciate.

Hmmm...how is it Dead-like? You have now piqued my curiosity, sir. Also, whenever I hear Chris Forsyth's name I always confuse him with the dude from Come, for some reason. Doesn't that dude also do solo guitar stuff now? I can't keep up anymore.

there are some kinda dark star-ish cosmic jam sections. i guess chris brokaw does solo stuff? i can't remember.

Aww. don't take that too literally, just at times the two-guitar approach comes close to the Dead feel-wise for me, though in a pretty different context. There is no singing, so keep that in mind. Really you'd have to listen to the live set that is posted to see if you hear it, but I get there with them at times for sure. They haven't been playing together nearly long enough to deserve this unfair comparison though, so I don't wanna compare them for real. I just think that folks I know who like some pretty goofy jam shit might hear this and think it is great, but it veers closer to Television territory soloing-wise than typical jam band Allmans/Santana/Garcia worship.

i described it as a “Dark Star”/”Little Johnny Jewel”/”Calvary Cross” kinda thing. which i know is high praise, but i don't know, it's pretty fucking good.

Yeah, this all sounds promising for sure! Will check it out. Thanks!

Yeah Tyler, that is pretty spot on sound-wise for sure. Only made it halfway through the second show yesterday, excited to listen to the rest today! Hope this band tours somewhere I can see them once they hit the road.

i think he is doing a solo tour w/ bachman later this year, but not sure about a full band tour -- i guess the players are all busy w/ various other things?

Yeah, saw something about that Bachman tour at some point. I saw Forsyth with Koen Holtkamp last year, which was cool, but would definitely be most excited to see the full-band at this point. I really like his playing though, I would go to that solo show for sure.

Hadn't gone to Pitchfork in a long time other than when pointed there for a particular review, but for some reason cruised the page today and was excited to see a new "the Out Door" devoted exclusively to Loren Connors:

http://pitchfork.com/features/the-out-door/9150-the-legacy-of-loren-connors/

Haven't read it yet but hope to dig in later today.

^^^ just read this, it's definitely a worthwhile read. I really love how much attention Loren's been getting the last few years. He's playing a lot more, records are getting reissued. Was thinking while reading the piece that I've been listening to his music with great interest for 12+ years now, and there are not many artists who fall into that category for me. Music I loved when I was 16 that I still love now.

cool, looking forward to reading that. connors is someone i feel like i've barely scratched the surface on. though i have plenty of his albums...

my 1st exposure to him was that Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Improvisations when i was a college radio dj in the late 90s and it was uhhhh, not the best way to be introduced. i was not ready!

There's a small chance I am moving back to NYC this year, and if I do I am going to try to catch Loren play whenever I can. Never seen him in person.

I definitely was not ready for Loren the first time I heard him. Took me a few years, but my listening habits have been gravitating towards this kinda thing more and more, as this thread attests to I guess.