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

oh, to change the subject back to something arguably more relevant, i have a recommendation for y'all:

norberto lobo, fornalha

new record, lovely guitar/soundscapes.

you can listen to some of it here: http://isolatarium.com/2014/09/19/norberto-lobo-fran/

and buy it here: http://threefour.bigcartel.com/product/norberto-lobo-fornalha-lp

wondrous cover btw

http://isolatarium.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/norberto-lobo-fornalha.jpg

Man, the Norberto Lobo sounds great. Cool player.

yeah that is amazing

i think you can hear more of the record here: http://www.artesonora.pt/breves/norberto-lobo-edita-fornalha/

and/or here: http://www.ruadebaixo.com/norberto-lobo-fornalha-5-11-2014.html

find it hard to believe anyone finds after the ball more dour than raag manifestos. it makes sense to me that jack rose would loom larger than fahey for a lot of these guys though. there's a certain looseness to jack's playing, even when he's at his most faheyish, a swing to his syncopation (& a sort of exuberance in his busyness mb) & he didn't have fahey's laconic calm. I think rose's sunflower river blues is closest to the version on the fahey/kottke/lang record but jack's version still feels a lot more open & improvised than fahey's more composer-ly control. that kind of 69/70sish maximum mass 'high fahey' is the only one of fahey's incarnations that I think he is v close to. if you wanted some punkish challops maybe you'd point to alcohol as a common influence.

otherwise rose's music sounds much more modern. a background on electric, the influence of years playing improv drone on his sense of structure, and with a good ear for & interest in the physical sound of the instrument. fahey is audibly of a different era, you still hear glimmers of the 19th century listening to him. I can see how rose seems like a richer well to draw from for these guys & you can definitely hear much more rose than fahey in eg. daniel bachman

jack rose heckled an old john fahey when he saw him playing some electric stuff, though he was a bit ashamed of it years later.

all the red krayola I've heard has been quite inconsistent, the recording w/ fahey is not that special iirc but I liked the art & language stuff too.

basically the though the first six takoma albums packaged in the Transcendental Waterfall box set are all pretty perfect really

― i did it all for the 'nuki (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, November 24, 2014 1:21 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this^^^

Though I rep p hard for Railroad and even harder for Of Rivers and Religion, and I also really like God Time & Causality, (and Let Go - this whole era, really) and I sorta lightheartedly busted Swingset Steve's chops about being so tough on that stuff in his book.

Also, yall are crazy if you don't like Red Cross. That record is gorgeous. Someone once described it as Fahey taking his obviously declining ability and turning it into something beautiful, which I think crystallizes why I like this album so much.

Anyone ever hear that Three Day Band album with Ayal Senior?

Also, ogmor, good call on the strong Rose / Bachman link. Just saw him play here a few nights ago and the influence of Jack (who I was lucky enough to see play many, many times) was unmistakable.

I'm not necessarily arguing the point about rose v fahey but Ryley is kinda trolley overall on Twitter

Lots of good stuff on the recent Avant Ghetto radio show (including a lengthy delve into our own Neal's Rag Lore project). He played a track by some guy named Clay Cantrell that was pretty lovely, nice low-key acoustic playing: https://soundcloud.com/clay-cantrell/wraith-visitation-1

Ehh, other stuff I could dig up not quite as compelling, but I like a good low-key run through.

Amen to favorable comments on Red Cross. Also, its notes incl. Glenn Jones's memories of the ever-colorful JF.

i certainly like that one the best of his late stuff, but on the whole i'm not a big fan of that era.

neal the rag lore stuff on avant ghetto sounds great

Yeah, the Rag Lore releases are definitely cool. For those not looking to sift through a radio show to get there, you can check that recording out here: http://raglore.com/album/sabah-el-mitragyna-reveries

i was googling around and didn't realize Danny Paul Grody used to be in a post-rock band, but that totally makes sense, this seems pretty cool (band called The Drift)

http://thedrift.bandcamp.com/album/memory-drawings

Thanks guys, real glad you pointed that out to me Davis. Great radio, thing that I was psyched on the most was how Jeff layered the Toshi Ichiyanagi, Michael Ranta, and Takehisa Kosugi improvisation on top of the latter part of my tape, the drones. Comfortable segue there.

In relation to the reupload of the 'Azalea' recordings - all of these outtakes and unreleased material originally came from johnfahey.blogspot.com. All expired links now, most all of it has since shown up on Delta Slider and a couple other places too. But there was one post explaining how the recording session for Dance of Death took place over a couple days and resulted in lots of extra unused material. Plus overall, if you check out the detailed "sessions" text that Takoma published, there are TONS of mysterious song titles, but that's besides the point. Stephen at the blog uploaded a chunk of these Dance of Death outtakes/alt takes/random curios. Delta Slider never re-upped this, and no one came forward to do it either when it was talked about on the yahoo group. So I grabbed it on my hard drive and am putting it together now. It's nothing extremely special, mostly short fragments, a few unissued songs, but it's interesting since it comes from that very early period. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to hear certain artists in the studio, trying out takes and stopping abruptly. This is mostly what that is.

That's what a lot of the weird/misspelled Fahey albums put onto Spotify lately are like. Studio banter and whatnot. Bizarre stuff:

http://open.spotify.com/track/50Eh5vuktd1nfvZMSZsu4v ('Dvorsack' lol)

^^ that one is outtakes from "Railroad" I think. Of course since it's some shady third party trying to make a buck they call it 'Masters of the Last Century: The Best of John Fahey"

looking forward to the upload though!

Oh damn, yeah I've been wanting to go swimming through all that stuff on Spotify, so strange.

Prepared Guitar publishes a list of Essential Names in Contemporary Guitar and I was happy to see Kyle Fosburgh of Grass Top Records get a nod, well deserved

http://preparedguitar.blogspot.com.es/2013/12/kyle-fosburg-13-questions.html

lot of names, some familiar and some not....and Jill "I Kissed a Girl" Sobule! who knew?

http://preparedguitar.blogspot.com.es/2014/11/201-essential-names-in-contemporary_29.html

Out of nowhere here, but I just recently revisited James Blackshaw's The Cloud of Unknowing and it holds up as one of my favorites, still. Not sure how much discussion he's had here besides a shout out or two. Totally gorgeous.

yeah, that was the first blackshaw record I heard -- so good. his and jack rose's records in the mid 00s were really what got me going deeper into this stuff. though this thread is probably most responsible.
heard that the next blackshaw record is going to be pretty different -- singing? pop songs? something like that.

i don't know that one, but All Is Falling by Blackshaw is really special to me, though in a lot of ways it's more of a composer's record, like the guitar is a big part of it but feels more akin to guys like Philip Glass and Steve Reich in some ways

John Mulvey just posted his end-of-year picks for Uncut: http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/uncut-editors-diary/the-154-best-albums-of-2014-a-very-personal-list

Lots of familiar names from this thread, including Rag Lore!

need to give cloud of unknowing another listen. friend of mine who loves all this kind of stuff and turned me on to a lot of it (including paul metzger) says it's his favorite solo guitar album

the only one I have is Glass Bead Game and I like that a lot, I should check those other ones out

good call on the Glass/Reich orchestra vibe

Yeah, this track in particular is a real jam! Very catchy, actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F5at5y87ZQ

i've always associated james blackshaw with like the guitar player magazine crowd for some reason. guess i'll give him a shot

No way! Try the track I just posted.

heard that the next blackshaw record is going to be pretty different -- singing? pop songs? something like that.

― tylerw, Monday, December 1, 2014 11:29 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So he's going to follow the Steve Gunn trajectory?

i've always associated james blackshaw with like the guitar player magazine crowd for some reason. guess i'll give him a shot

― global tetrahedron, Monday, December 1, 2014 11:37 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wouldn't say that at all!

ha yeah, maybe you're confusing him with someone else?
here's what he said about the new LP on twitter:
"New album out in February 2015 on Important Records and P-Vine in Japan. It's called 'Summoning Suns' and I'm singing for the first time. Think Baroque Pop / 70's California sound. With contributions from Simon Scott, Kaoru Noda, Annie Nilsson & Mori Wa Ikiteiru."

Tyler-bait for the day: William Tyler Band covering "What Goes On" (has probably been directly sent to you cosmically but still ....):

https://soundcloud.com/williamtylermusic/william-tyler-band-with-derek-hoke-what-goes-on-vu

nice! sounds like they are taking it in an almost allman/dead direction...

Hah yeah man, an approach that is sounding pretty sweet to me today.

Dang
Think I can get some ppl to my 3rd VU jam with that as bait?! I'd hope so.

Would think so too. Who doesn't want to jam on that song?

It's #3, so my plan is to go for 3rd album material, which is sadly Cale-less but also the most popular? We'll see I guess. I'm looking forward to it at least.

We did an (audio) interview with Blackshaw two weeks ago, when he visited my hometown with Lubomyr Melnyk, on 'Summoning Suns' and 'Apologia'. With Glass Bead Game and The Cloud of Unknowing stuff in between:
http://www.mixcloud.com/Sterrenplaten/sterrenplaten-21-november-2014-interview-james-blackshaw/ (30mins in)

thanks for the link, interested to hear this new album.
pretty killer live recording of a new solar motel jam here: https://soundcloud.com/solar-motel-band/high-castle-rock

thanks maarten!

I'll check that out when I get an opportunity.

Wondering if anyone listened to "The Mirror Speaks" track I posted- given all of the unfamiliarity expressed I'd figured there'd be some feedback by now!

It really is a stellar track.

I am so-so on Blackshaw. At times it sounds amazing to me, and I dig the cascade of notes, at other times it just washes over me and I don't really engage with it. That track is cool in parts, and he is nailing it, but at times I find it a little too busy to get into. I like the back end of the track the best, where he sits on some figures for longer periods and lets some air in.

Recent Out Door has a section focussed on solo guitar players, with a cool bit on Norberto Lobo. Also hits up Cam Deas and Matthew Mullane, all three of whom I know very little about. Feature is here:

http://the-out-door.tumblr.com/tagged/Technique

There are full transcripts available too, posted on the blog: http://the-out-door.tumblr.com/tagged/Technique

i love this so much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5thmhpQVHY

Yeah, that is nice. Like the end of it a lot. Probably just need to listen to more Blackshaw.

know what you mean about him, he can sometimes get overly dense or something. one of my faves is celeste, which has a little more open space in its latter half.

Thanks for the rec, will probably still need to take him in small doses but he can obviously play like hell.

grandavis I get where you're coming from- but the whole middle section of "The Mirror Speaks" is no more busy to me than Basho or any other notable finger picking 12 string material I've heard. However the intro of the track is definitely a stormy wash of sound.

But that's just my perspective. It could certainly wash out easily but The Cloud of Unknowing at least has nice melodic progression for me. Maybe it's lack of dynamics/breaks that irk you?

To be honest I don't listen to the busier Basho stuff much either, but I am not a completist on any of this stuff so I don't want to suggest that I have thought about this super deeply. Just think that I am drawn to the simple-tunes side of this spectrum, as well as the stuff that rides a "minimalist" compositional bent when the right (or picking) hand goes "maximalist". Pretty vague, but kind of how my brain latches onto this type of playing generally these days. But yeah, lack of breaks is maybe the key. There are dynamics obviously, but maybe maxed out a bit for me.