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

Also Tyler, yeah I didn't think you were suggesting many folks in this realm sound like Neil, and I agree with the background influence of Neil, which I am sure is there for almost anyone who loves this kinda stuff.

otm
neal has sold me on the COM stuff with his descriptions, haha. bring it on.

Yeah, me too. Those descriptions sound way better than a lot of the country-rock jams and staighter MV & EE songs I have heard.

Defiantly a whole nother ballpark. Some tunes go so far out that I wouldn't be able to describe it. Purists might not like it and find it too avant garde, but I love that stuff. MV also invented "spectrasound" for COM, no idea what that is but it sounds so different compared to studio setups... Willie Lanes "Recliner Ragas" COM stands out by a huge amount, and he's still in that zone doing LPs now (anyone else heard those records?). It's like there are up and coming outsider country, precise raga picking a la Blackshaw, some Bert Jansch stuff, Fahey of course, Sandy Bull types etc, but COM era MV and Willie Lane style exist somewhere far far away.

I return to the states in a couple days and am gonna try to put together a good mix (and provide links to every COM ever released too) before we leave. I doubt I can squeeze it in but none the less it'll get done when I'm home next week.

MV is p much the most underrated / overlooked architect of the 'freak folk' scene (and its myriad branches including 2nd and 3rd wave American Primitive as discussed here). I'm on board with everything he does, even when I don't totally 'get' it at first (ditto Neils Young and Hagerty). Also, been catching him live since the mid nineties and he and EE have really hit a stride lately - something to behold. If you get a chance, go see 'em.

Neal, I'm intrigued by your forthcoming primer! I'll weigh in, too - I don't have everything MV has done (I'd like to shake the hand of anyone that does), but I have tons, including the most recent box sets like Zebulon Residency and April Flower (which are great).

Prevailing theory among those 'in the know' is that those Ecstatic Peace! LPs - which were outliers, in some ways, and not very representative - hurt him some because people's first exposure to his music was his Crazy Horse fixation. I dig those LPs a lot, but they don't represent at all what dude is capable of in his best work.

ha, I saw glenn jones last night (sounding great) & he was making fun of neil young & the "american primitive" label in his charming, gentle way. will see mv ee in a few weeks too...

i kinda got off the MV boat because I was just overwhelmed by the amount of material. i did really like some of those Lps, though; and the Lunar Blues series of CDrs was fantastic.
I have mixed feelings abt the bloke, as I've heard various stories abt his personal weirdness from around the time Tower broke up -- burning bridges, being a weirdo.. idk. not that that changes the quality of someone's music.

the real secret weapon of Tower, imo, was PG6. love that dude more than anything.

i thought mv & ee would be real awesome, and the idea of it seemed nice in practice, but i didn't have the patience for the singing : /

i saw mv & ee last year and thought they got the balance of cosmic drone and frazzled neil young stuff down nicely. as did their support that night, who i believe were... whole voyald infinite light? they also had their own custom speaker system with them which sounded amaaaaaaazing. also v good memory of the vibes of seeing tower recordings about eight years ago but little memory of any details, which with my more knowledgeable mind of today that would be able to contextualise and such is a bummer.

i too saw glenn jones last week, v nice in the way you'd expect it to be. also with included gentle mockery of neil young, bruce springsteen and others. in the spirit of not being grimly serious about a person who himself wasn't very serious, he told a little rambling story about jack rose and ben chasny - jack was going on tour with ben and and glenn told jack to ask ben why he hadn't made any more instrumental guitar albums. jack asked him and ben's response was that he didn't really want to be pigeonholed in the whole john fahey robbie basho etc thing. glenn says to jack that he understands that response, to which jack replies "not me, that's exactly where i want to be pigeonholed!"

ha, I loved that jack story so much. were you at the cafe oto show? I guess he was telling the same stories all week

i thought mv & ee would be real awesome, and the idea of it seemed nice in practice, but i didn't have the patience for the singing : /

― j.

That's what I mean by digging back and making a good mix of their homemade CDR label Child of Microtones. They rarely if only two times use actual vocal singing (ie lyrics, not count vocals as an instrument) I believe a lot of American primitive lovers missed out on some of the most creative steel string work in the mid-00s because of how fast and vast their catalog was growing. Their Child of Microtones style to mix of finger picking and free form experimental instrumentalist is unmatched til today. Willie Lane is also in that very unique niche too. Rafi Bookstaber does carry a bit of MV style here and there too, but that's besides the point.

The Golden Road country rock is wayyy different than the insanely psychedelic electric band Bummer Road material, which all these are vastly different than the multi instrumental Child of Microtones world they created way ahead of its time. And the fact that they are still home making COM, one was released last week, shows how exploratory they are. Don't judge on the Golden Road stuff :) - I just wish more people knew how chock full of gems the Child of Microtones discography is - and def how that material significantly changed the 'American primitive'/DIY style that we know of at this point in time.

might just be the stuff on spotify but MV & EE ain't doing a whole lot for me. feel like there's a ton of kinda shambly neil young ppl out there that do this better and the singing isn't the best and not even in an interesting will oldham way

finally checking out the rag lore stuff - totally great. nicely done, dude.

dope jams for today:

Voice of the Seven Woods - UK witchy folk stuff!

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

Matthew Young - Traveler's Advisory (Yogi/Drag City reissue of odd mid 80s private press album, dude looks like a social studies teacher, record is weird mix of amazing hammered dulcimer, Casio, drum machine, and tape loops....parts are stunning), here's his cover of michael hurley...can't find the instrumentals on youtube which is a shame they are really striking, super complex dark sounding stuff almost like appalaichan koto music

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

interesting, don't know either of those things. will check 'em out.
on the reissue tip, this "new" Peter Walker album comes out this week I think (originally recorded in the early 70s)
http://lightintheattic.net/releases/994-has-anybody-seen-our-freedoms
it has vocals, but the guitar playing will probably please people on this thread. walker's rainy day raga is a constant fave of mine.

voice of the 7 woods/thunders/rick tomlinson stuff is all good as much as i've heard
i like the more wacked out/plugged in songs best
as usual

yeah should say that clip is way more straight up acoustic than a lot of it which is more psychey and full band stuff...but it's all great imo

Man that Matthew Young album sounds right up my alley, thanks for posting that. Have been meaning to check out Rick Tomlinson in more detail as well, have not heard much at all but see him repped in lots of cool places. Definitely the feeling wacked out/plugged in side of this equation.

Tyler posted this before I think, and in some other channels recently, but these Zachary Cale covers are pretty damn cool. I especially like the Eno and country-shuffled/acoustic leaning take on the Stooges "1970". Sounds right in a lot of ways that covering the Stooges typically does not, i.e., he owns it in a cool way without it sounding that forced. Peter Laughner cover is great too, and probably suits Cale's voice best.

http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2013/11/04/the-lagniappe-sessions-zachary-cale-brian-eno-the-stooges/

found an interview with Matthew Young...interesting guy! came from more of an electronic music background which kinda makes sense...disses Ween and Klaus Schultz!

http://www.longhousepoetry.com/young.html

Hah hah will check that out.

might just be the stuff on spotify but MV & EE ain't doing a whole lot for me. feel like there's a ton of kinda shambly neil young ppl out there that do this better and the singing isn't the best and not even in an interesting will oldham way

― lorde willin' (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, November 18, 2013

it's not just you, I saw MV/EE live and hated them. never wanted to give the records a chance. just lazy, tuneless hippie wanking. feel free to point me to a Spotify link or whatever that can change my mind.

shout out to spottie who doesn't really post on the thread much anymore :( but just did a huge update of the spotify playlist :)

Glad to do it. A lot of the artists aren't available on Spotify but lemme know if I'm missing anything. You guys go at such a quick pace! So much info and quality links on a near daily basis. I've made so many discoveries here I don't even know where to begin to thank people.

I often just put that playlist on shuffle and let it ride for days at a time.

I play Solar Motel quite a bit.

Well, thanks from me as well Spottie for making this effort. I don't use Spotify too much, but this is the kind of thing it really does well. Plan to "let it ride" myself in the near future ....

putting spottie's list on shuffle makes me feel bad for clogging it up w/ early modern guitar transcriptions

John Mulvey, of Uncut magazine (which I hadn't really heard of until his stuff started getting re-tweeted/posted all over the place), has been repping for most stuff in this thread pretty hard, and he just posted an "Uncut playlist" that includes Rag Lore's (i.e., Neal Cassady) "Sabah el Mitragyna Reveries". Pretty cool:

http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/wild-mercury-sound/the-43rd-uncut-playlist-of-2013

yeah, i like john. one of us!

Seems like a nice dude, and certainly is putting this stuff out there. Have meant to post that "Marquee Moon"/"Sailor's Life" list somewhere. That was a fun exercise with some cool results.

yeah, absolutely. that is a "genre" i can get behind.
this might be a bit of an outlier for this thread, but it is an instrumental guitar-based album -- the Plankton Wat LP on Thrill Jockey.
https://soundcloud.com/thrilljockey/plankton-wat-empire-mines?in=thrilljockey/sets/thrill-jockey-tracks
Dude (real name Dewey Mahood) was (is?) in Eternal Tapestry. More Floyd than Fahey, but I've been enjoying it.

I've only heard a couple of tracks off of that record, and they were pretty cool. He was in Jackie-O Motherfucker when I saw them a bunch of years back as well I think, guy has been playing this kinda thing for a while. The acoustic on that song is nice, and not outside the wheelhouse of this thread at all. I should try to listen to that whole thing.

yeah, that track is good, though I actually think it's better listened to as a whole -- don't know if there's a "standout" song, but the album has a great vibe/atmosphere overall.

Ahh cool, will add it to the pile. Definitely felt that way about the D. Paul Grody album, it was like a long song-suite to me.

just got wind of this

Black Dirt Oak
Wawayanda Patent
MIE
13 January 2014
MIE has cast a harvest wreath upon our season's door, a deceptively intricate record woven like a spell by many interlocked arms and voices: a welcome hex.

Featuring Steve Gunn (GHQ, Desert Heat, Violators), Nathan Bowles (Pelt, Black Twig Pickers), Jimy SeiTang (Rhyton, Stygian Stride, Psychic Ills), Justin Tripp (Georgia, Steve Gunn), Margot Bianca (Flown, Key Demo), Dave Shuford (Rhyton, D. Charles Speer, NNCK), and Wednesday Knudsen (Pigeons, Sea Donkeys), Black Dirt Oak's Wawayanda Patent is a song sung from a splintered Ouija board, a mass Shaker gift-drawing, a truly exquisite corpse. All these musicians have been fixtures at this rural studio west of New York City for years, but never so integrated as in this bizarre working. With songs that seem both plant and animal, this music splices many logics into a trembling unity. Without a doubt, an alkaloid-laden root is cellared down in Jason Meagher's Black Dirt Studio. To drop the needle onto this record is to slice across its concentric spheres. The fumes instigate fever dreams: Arco banjo strings and horns spiral like vines and gently strangle steeples erected by drum machines, leaving a skyline of electrified maypoles twinkling in the dark. Hands clasp and graft synthetic and old-world strains into an agrarian wish. The plant leafs out, flowers, fruits, and then sinks silvery seeds back into the rot. Someone plucks a song out in processional cadence only to fall backwards into a seance, channeling creation myths aloft in winds of disembodied voices. The harmonics float down and shroud the earth in breathable fabrics, tenderly draped over dead electronics like stainless skeletons half-buried in dirt, grinning to expose a circuitry of gold fillings amidst the teeth. To describe this music is to clog a drain with hair. You can see what repeated listenings do. I've flooded my bath.

To be sure, each musician has left her telltale fingerprints all over this record; however, the patterns are spun around an entirely different magnetic north, or maybe an underworld passage where the pole should be: Bowles blankets SeiTang's synthesized landforms in wet forests of frailed banjo, wooded hollows haunted by Bianca's porcelain song. Their impossible horizon melts with a setting inner sun that turns out to be Knudsen's sax. Meagher spins the whole like a glass witch ball, the distended interior described by Tripp's geomantic figures, the crystalline surface etched by Shuford's acid. Gunn delicately suspends the microcosm by a golden thread... and then they all trade places without us even noticing. Familiar sounds are put to unfamiliar tasks. While the music was germinated in the protected warmth of this cellar, pressing up against those walls are ten-thousand hectacres of soaked earth, the drained and fertile remainder of ancient swamplands known as the Wawayanda Patent: soil fat with sulfuric allums, tubers, and now this occult growth, uprooted from below Orange County's sun-soaked surface. Ingest with care.

-Rob Smith (Pigeons, Rhyton)

well shit

i really liked pigeons first album haven't heard them since

that's some album writeup!

pigeons are great imo. underrated band.

Hah hah, that looks great to me, but I think N. Bowles himself told me about this at one point and merely described it as "doofy". I am having trouble imagining that it is doofy, but you never know. Didn't realize N. Bowles had played with Pigeons until recently.

First track from the forthcoming Steve Gunn & Mike Gangloff record is being floated around. Mike is on tanpura on this track, which is always such a cool sounding instrument, and Steve just lays down some pretty loose playing over the top. Definitely sounds like a late-night recording session or something, nice:

https://soundcloud.com/#importantrecords/steve-gunn-mike-gangloff-worry

cool back and forth interview with William Tyler and Doug McCoombs of Tortoise/Brokeback/11th Dream Day....not surprised to hear that young William was a big Tortoise fan:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/doug-mccombs-interviews-william-tyler/Content?oid=11590541

gunn-gangloff tune sounds nice! hard to keep up with these dudes. but i do like the approach, with this and the Black Dirt Oak thing and the Desert Heat EP... more of a jazz approach, getting players in the same room and seeing what happens.

I think these dudes have trouble keeping up with themselves. I am a big fan of putting players in a room and seeing what happens, seems to pay big dividends with a lot of these folks. Hit the Tom Carter & Bardo Pond collaboration today, and it similarly delivers as an example of getting the right folks in a room together and seeing what happens.

in kind of a melancholy pre-holiday mood today and remembering that the fahey xmas records are some of my favorites by him

i found an album by M. Mucci the other day, Time Lost. it's pretty sweet. never heard of him aside from him being mentioned in that american primitive post on total vibration that was linked upthread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U240SJk6m9A

link to his site:

http://mmucci.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c80pa9lCFjQ

^ this is hilarious, apologies if old

ha, that's excellent.

are there many people in the vague scene that this thread is about doing john martyn-style effects laden stuff? if there's anyone who's approximating stuff like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X5qDeK3siw

then i'm there.

love the moving capo vid! love john martyn, especially his echoplex stuff. don't know much which is close to that, yr either moving towards an ash ra new age place w/ mark mcguire or someone or someone improv like david daniell.

has anyone else noticed that noel akchote seems to have released about 30 albums this year?

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

-or someone