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

It must be interesting to have such an intimate relationship with the general feeling of vast loneliness/calm, given where he lives and his experience producing music that conveys it so well. I wonder if it's ever overwhelming when you're so constantly surrounded by it in both of those ways.

all the correct reference points are here, but I'm not 100% feeling this yet; some of it sounds like Effects Pedal Demonstration, one of my most hated genres. Guy seems worth further investigation, though

haha when i think of effects pedal demonstration i think of youtube demo videos with blues dads in em playing the worst possible music. also one of my most hated genres

I just mean guitarists with loop or 'freeze' pedals who overdub themselves in real time, just layering really simple parts until it's just a wash of drone. Some people are good at that sort of thing (Roy Montgomery, Jeff Parker, etc) but mostly when I see people doing this I wonder how there can be anyone left on Earth who's amazed / entertained by watching this process unfold.

This is clearly a bias I have, so don't mind me! Don't even get me started on extended technique, ha ha ha

That reminds me... did anyone else see that demonstration video Ryley did for Reverb? pretty entertaining, great sounding guitar too

hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcRvo8JrNTU

I like loopers if there are drums too.

I think loops can be good or bad! just like anything!

must have mentioned him before but david daniell has done some v lush looping drones out to the horizon in open C type stuff, some bits on youtube

Sometime Fred Frith collaborator* Janet Feder who I need to try harder to keep track of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYZMXfzACr0

*well they split an album together--not sure how much they've actually played together

It must be interesting to have such an intimate relationship with the general feeling of vast loneliness/calm, given where he lives and his experience producing music that conveys it so well. I wonder if it's ever overwhelming when you're so constantly surrounded by it in both of those ways.

If I'd got my shit together, I'd like to have written something substantial about this - the link between landscape and art, broadly, but more specifically about that sense of artists trying to perfect the alchemy of transmuting one substance into another (landscape into music/paint/language or whatever).

Not exactly original, I know, but it's something I keep coming back to.

I'd read it!

In this particular case you don't need to have experience with that kind of environment to be so effectively transported there through the art. Or do you? Why or why not? I only enjoy art that transports me somewhere when I'm interacting with it. But I acknowledge that the places it brings me is only determined by my very specific accumulation of experiences, interests & perspective. If I go exactly where the artist is trying to take me does that reflect badly on the art for lacking a necessary level of depth and interpretation? Obviously overtly cultural music can't be faulted for this.

I've been thinking about starting a thread about the transportive nature of music and whether or not it's something I'm fixated on more than others.

that janet feder thing is great, never heard of her but I really like her playing. going to investigate

it's interesting the difference between the landscape an artist lives in and the landscapes they are drawn to. all those fahey pieces about rivers, but he was decidedly suburban

transport you to somewhere spatially, like a physical space? when i think of music that 'transports' i think of to some different state of consciousness i guess. never thought of it that way i guess

i would read also xp

i know i'm hokey re: 'consciousness'. i suppose its true that a lot of music does take me to a time or place but that's often due to music triggering a specific memory of listening to that piece of music in a certain time/place.

Feder shared this album with Frith:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=janet+feder+frith+ironic+universe

She's put out some solo albums. A lot of her solo material has vocals, and unfortunately, while I love her playing, I am not that into the vocal side of her work.

I remember my mother trying to mark up a pair of pants I was wearing, to alter them. Reggae band playing on TV (local public station). I keep moving around.

My mom: "It [the music] sends you."

Reggae band playing on TV (local public station)

Must have been these guys???

https://youtu.be/6jYMP1tz02Q

It's similar to a dream for me in the sense that on one hand it can be a very particular physical space (I can't listen to most pop music because it "transports" me to the grocery store or the lobby of a dentists office), or a little more vaguely a type of place (gardens, mountains, and old home), and on the other hand the "environment" is harder to pin down and semi materializes as a result of the feeling I'm having as apposed to the other way around but I still feel like I've literally gone somewhere.

xps

an old home*

Interesting. For me that's almost never anything but a metaphor for an emotional experience.

Lots of sad, somber music doesn't make me sad because it instead is transporting me to a peaceful icy landscape, or a time in my life where I've quietly stared at the stars at night, or plenty of other equally corny examples.

Must have been these guys???

Not that it matters, but it was actually someone legitimate who happened to be playing in the local PBS studio, or maybe it was even a rebroadcast. This was a long time ago (79/80ish) and probably before I had even heard much reggae.

I don't visualize (just the briefest flashes, at most) so I'm not sure if I even could be transported to another place very adequately, but maybe by some more vague "sense of place."

ya i know i just love that video xp

(Bored at work one day before winter break begins.)

all those fahey pieces about rivers, but he was decidedly suburban

― ogmor, Thursday, December 22, 2016 1:00 PM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

at least in the bbc doc when they went back to some areas of takoma it looked pretty bucolic & there was a river running through it...would imagine it was only moreso in the 40s and 50s

i wonder from our perspective in 2016 we have a different view of what "suburban" entails...i know i've seen pictures of bloomington, mn where the mall of america is now and it's fields and a few scattered houses

Well there is "rural suburban" as well.

Right. I don't see anything inherently contradictory about suburbs having rivers running through them.

(FWIW, I lived in a suburb of Philadelphia in the late 70s and early 80s that was really more like a transitioning rural area. There was a small farm immediately behind my family's yard, and there were other small farms in the area.)

Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, despite reading like a manifesto of wilderness ecstasy, is precisely about one of those liminal zones between the suburban and the wild. So is Walden, really.

right, he wrote about the sligo, but he the other places he was inspired by were largely rural, sometimes imaginary - a view from a rail road intersection, an incongruously placed cement factory, the imagined pennsylvania/alabama border he wanted to stomp around, the palace of king philip xiv of spain which might easily turn into the palace of the invisible city of bladensburg... these places are not suburban really, even if you might want to claim the imagination behind them is distinctively suburban. there might be bits of places he was in or had visited, but the way they appeared was dream-like, not tied to the reality of the place

also wrt to takoma, i suppose there is the takoma that is takoma and the semi-mystical takoma full of talking turtles etc from his book

I can't listen to most pop music because it "transports" me to the grocery store or the lobby of a dentists office

otm

wow NPR bestoys recognition on "the scene"

couple i hadn't heard of

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2016/12/30/507425674/the-top-10-solo-guitar-records-of-2016

slide work on that new Bachman is so incredible, I can't even imagine how he does that drone/scrape/noise hovering-over-you sound

Dinsdale posted this list on the year end thread
https://stationarytravels.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/2016-in-review-journeys-in-acoustic-primitive-experimental-folk/

^^ that list and the ambient/drone/electroacoustic on that site are kinda fascinating. year-end lists done right. can't wait to dig in.

yeah, that list looks ideal -- a bunch of things I haven't heard, all sounds good.

the new Eyvind Kang/Tashi Dorji split on Unrock arrived today, lovely side by Kang and some more challenging stuff from Dorji, sounds great on first listen.

Hey all, happy new year. Or, at the very least: hey, it's a new year and I am glad this page still exists.

Also, fully agree that Bachman's slide work is becoming a real treat. New record rules in my opinion. As far as the new one goes, some of the drone is another musician, at least on some of the tracks, but of course he is capable of creating that with his right hand too. But yeah, his buddy plays a home-made drone instrument on the record that Daniel plays along to.

ah, OK, I missed that detail, makes much more sense

Idk if this exactly fits with this thread but the new Kevin Hufnagel computer-processed guitar album seems to focus more on processed acoustic and ukelele:
https://kevinhufnagel.bandcamp.com/album/the-protected-shards

the new Eyvind Kang/Tashi Dorji split on Unrock arrived today, lovely side by Kang and some more challenging stuff from Dorji, sounds great on first listen.

― sleeve, Saturday, December 31, 2016 5:57 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

digging this

Was just jamming the Dorji/Marisa Anderson split the other day. Still dig his playing a lot, and there are a couple of real gems from Marisa on that record too. Kang is a great player, so I am sure that split is ace too.

Also, fully agree that Bachman's slide work is becoming a real treat. New record rules in my opinion. As far as the new one goes, some of the drone is another musician, at least on some of the tracks, but of course he is capable of creating that with his right hand too. But yeah, his buddy plays a home-made drone instrument on the record that Daniel plays along to.

― grandavis, Tuesday, January 3, 2017 6:14 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a great video of "Brightleaf Blues" that shows those wheel-crank drone instruments that his friend Forrest made. On the album it sounds like a couple tracks laid down or blended into each other with Daniel doing bar slide harmonics (see: Rose's Sundogs technique) + other drones (?) + the traditional fingerpicked pulls and slides. But I think the key is the restraint and amount of each drone rubbing up against each other within the finished piece. It really does have that hovering over you type of feeling without it getting too 'messy' and heavy, or even longwinded. Good stuff.

Thanks for linking to the Kevin Hufnagel album above, I like it a lot. The one from last year was great too.

Yep, I definitely nominated Backwards Through the Maze for the ILM eoy poll. I've no expectation that it will place but it will do well on my ballot.

Yeah Neal, I think you are spot on in both a) what is going on in those tunes and b) the restraint + amount + space + duration. Not always an easy negotiation to make, and I think it is made well on this record. And yeah Sleeve is totally right on in just noting how righteous a lot of the slide playing is. The "sundog" thing is part of it (pretty much eat that sound up myself), but his more trad playing is a real treat on this too.