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

Lots of new releases lately but other thread getting big and unwieldy and a resource hog. So! New thread for weird Fahey-esque instrumental folk guitar.

What did we have so far this year? Highlights for me:

William Tyler- Lost Colony (the kraut-country thing gets me going)
Steve Gunn- Way Out Weather
Nathan Bowles- Nansemond
Chris Forsyth- Intensity Ghost (think overall I liked Solar Motel better but I'm glad this one seems to be taking off)
Tashi Dorji- S/T

Seems like a lot of these folks made it into the limelight this year! And new Six Organs looks to be a monster.

Can we keep the Youtube embedding to a minimum in this incarnation? You can prevent them from embedding by having "https:" as opposed to just "http:" in the URL

thank you! I'll post a link on the old one unless someone does it first

am I correct that the Tashi Dorji S/T is older stuff compiled? really liked the new EP on Bandcamp page.

re: Richard Dawson, was gonna say that I hear a lot of Bill Orcutt's influence/style in his playing, anybody else? (sorry if this was noted previously)

― some kind of terrible IDM with guitars (sleeve), Saturday, December 13, 2014 11:41 AM

also ppl were talking about richard dawson, don't want to derail!

lol no worries there

doing some EOY catchup and I am not feeling this Steve Gunn at all, threadban me if you must

liked the Solar Motel (2 tracks on Spotify), really liked the new Tashi Dorji EP.

am I correct that the Tashi Dorji S/T is older stuff compiled?
yeah, pulled from several years' worth of cassette iirc. kind of a "greatest hits," i guess. he really is great, seems to get better every time i play his stuff.

sleeve - yeah a ton of orcutt & not to be super cynical but he seems to be getting a lot of praise from ppl I don't get the sense really know Orcutt

But i do like him

I just think it's a little like how when I finally heard gang of four reissues after growing up a fugazi fan

Oh hey folks.

Sleeve, that Gunn record definitely is a very specific kind of cool to me, I get why it wouldn't appeal to you. It is mostly very low-key and its charms can be extremely subtle, but I have personally found it to be deep and varied enough that I return to it pretty frequently. Maybe it'll grow on you, but it is definitely a song-based record that doesn't try to push the musicality as far as a lot of records touched on in this thread (and many of Gunn's other records do).

yeah i was actually wondering recently what I would think of gunn's latest if it was the first record of his I had heard. the context of his gradual development into a more straight-ahead singer-songwriter adds some flavor I think (if that makes sense). love the latest but at the same time, i hope he hasn't left behind his more avant leanings -- those gunn-truscinski records are still my faves out of everything he's done.

hey i have a question -- how do you pronounce cian of the name cian nugent?

rather how does one pronounce cian accurately

i thought it was like cyan but then realized it could be sean or shee-an or idk what and i would like to know

Kee An

i thought it was just pronounced "sean" for years though.

Like Ian preceded with a /k/ ?
Good to know! I have been meaning to ask this question for months.

yes, exactly!

haha apparently lots of blog posters and show hosters feel the need to lay this to rest too:
http://i61.tinypic.com/vgmyht.png

The Gunn/Mike Cooper and Gunn/Gangloff records both came out this year I think, and both contain a good range of playing outside of his "Way Out Weather" mode. It will be interesting to see what side of the divide the upcoming Gunn/Black Twig Pickers record will ride, but my guess is I will dig it. Hope some of it revisits this territory though:

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Black_Twig_Pickers_and_Steve_Gunn/NATCH_1/Salted_Caramel

Global mentioned notable records from this year, and I wanna bring up Bachman's "Orange Co. Serenade". Really enjoyed it & definitely revisit it pretty frequently. Feel like he is growing and really may be just hitting his stride now, though who knows. New record on Three Lobed apparently out in April or May. Saw him Saturday night and the new songs were great, no reason not to believe that this next record will be anything other than really good.

dammit I forgot about that in my EOY listening binge this weekend, will check it out!

fwiw my introduction to Gunn was his side of the "Not The Spaces You Know..." comp, which I loved

oh yeah, shouldn't have forgotten the Daniel Bachman one! I think I've come around on that one, seems like the most cohesive release he's done so far.

Also Charlie Parr doesn't usually fit in this thread but he did a release this year that definitely does. It's called Hollandale- some really nicely recorded exploratory fingerpicked instrumentals. All on a National resonator, which sounds awesome/immense at times. Some cool sounds and textures added... anyway, may have been overlooked in this thread... It's on Spotify

Has this been shared yet? HD video of Tashi playing on WFMU, last September.

vimeo.com/wfmu/review/106853495/6f23ec5808

gamelan for guitar

awesome

Whatever he's got there on the neck is partially under certain strings and on top of others. He accidentally bumps into it at one point and it seems very loose. I thought it was a capo at first. Such crazy sounds coming out of that guitar.

Watching the video as I'm commenting, probably not the best idea. Still don't know what that is, even with the close ups.

I thought it was a hairclip, it loops round the top string.

Think Ogmor is right, looks like a large barrette, the cheap kind you can get at CVS etc.

coupla good tashi things over on the FMA: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tashi_Dorji/

for the record here are my fave ilx-brigade kinda things of 2014. the usuals!

Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band - Intensity Ghost
Nathan Bowles - Nansemond
Steve Gunn - Way Out Weather
Daniel Bachman - Orange Co. Serenade
William Tyler - Lost Colony
Tashi Dorji - s/t
Don Bikoff - Hallowed Ground
Mike & Cara Gangloff - Black Ribbon of Death, Silver Thread of Life
Alvarius B. / Sir Richard Bishop - If You Don’t Like It … Don’t!
Bill Orcutt - VDSQ
Sir Richard Bishop - VDSQ
Anthony Pasquarosa - VDSQ
Robbie Basho - Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 12 & 6
Smoke Dawson - Fiddle

more singer-songwriter-y things, but joan shelley (feat. nathan salsburg on some tracks) and ryley walker LPs are recommended too!

shit i forgot about bikoff

also you might say me and global are slightly excited about playing this show

http://first-avenue.com/event/2015/01/americanprimitive

nice!
yeah, if you ignore the bikoff cover art, it's a really nice record.

that amy in quebec track is so close to wine&roses/red pony/approaching of the disco void its almost a cover

was watching some fahey live on youtube last night...here's an 81 gig, with apparently Michael Hedges opening (sorry folks no records available didn't get pressed in time)...Fahey is being really smarmy in his banter, the set itself verges from awkward to hypnotic, found his flopping down combover hair kind of distracting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP08Y3DsJvs

this is a 2000 set, he does a lot of dicking around/joking around at the beginning, but about the 7:40 mark on he gets going and it's actually pretty cool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jXrutGt2U

We going the "https:..." route to skip embeds? Not that I don't love opening this thread to shots of Fahey at his weirdest ....

oops sorry

A leaner/meaner thread for 2015 I guess. I'll miss the Fahey gut though.

Transmissions Fest footage is new to me, awesome. I wish more people openly talked about his later work without full on the talk of "well, I don't know about this, but look at what he used to do." The only thing that I can't fully grasp is the Hitomi material, some of it is played in that Transmissions Fest video. Kinda feel like it goes down easier when you get to watch him play like that, on record is another thing. There is another noodley electric gig on youtube that actually does have a lot of syncopation; and getting to hear old styles on an electric is pretty nice. There aren't many artists that went so far in the other direction, let alone an instance where you get to watch past material with a new technique. Defiantly would rather have had Fahey do all that then not. I dig The Mill Pond lots. It's not too different than some of the stuff that is out there today. Womblife gets so zonked in parts you can't help but grin.

Loving this Glenn Jones tune, "The Teething Necklace (For John Fahey)"
xxx.youtube.com/watch?v=6qd7pWITPQQ

Couple things I put together,

John Fahey's Adelphi Sessions, the Dance of Death outtakes. Uploaded as MP3's, posted on my blog:
http://broadcastsfrompoorfarm.tumblr.com/post/105403178308/john-fahey-adelphi-sessions-the-dance-of-death

Scanned my copy of the mail order catalog from Fonotone Records, interesting curio. Includes the numerous early Fahey comps Joe Bussard curated for Fonotone.
http://broadcastsfrompoorfarm.tumblr.com/post/105401770173/fonotone-records-mail-order-catalog-pdf-booklet

I finally put together some new lapstyle material and wanted to share it here. "Blue For al-Watawit of Yashkur" sits as is, in a sorta demo state. I didn't want to forget all the new ideas I've been having, yet also told myself I wouldn't record again until I bought a nice microphone. Of course, I got impatient, so here we are. Before they find a home somewhere, I do want to properly record them.
http://raglore.com/album/blue-for-al-watawit-of-yashkur

Link for the MP3's are posted here,
http://broadcastsfrompoorfarm.tumblr.com/post/105403934713/rag-lore-blue-for-al-watawit-of

Look forward to checking this stuff out

Cool, thanks Neal! Actually already listened to your "Blue For al-Watawit of Yashkur" tracks (Mr. Avant Ghetto threw them up on twitter yesterday), really enjoyed them. First track sucked me right in, so yeah make a recording you are happy with and I am on board!

neal - or others - what microphones/mic pres do you guys use? this coming year i need to get serious about recording an album

like your new stuff neal

the only Tashi Dorji song on Spotify is a cool little curio, electronic remix featuring his guitar of a song by some psychey dude name Al Lover

http://open.spotify.com/track/2HxzI5VuTvgdbTGolZ7x7G

Thanks dudes, I have always just been using a portable digital Tascam recorder from B&H Photo that I bought a while back. It fits in your pocket so I've used it while out and walking around, but it's not a good choice for recording guitar at this point, I loved it at first bc of how much of an improvement it was over using the internal MacBook mic. I sold my two amps (+all other musical electronics) years ago during collage, which I regret now. As I would like to record traditionally with a mic and amp set up. Either using the sound hole or install a pick up. How about USB mics? Been talked about here before I think. Decent clarity from the models available now?

I think the solution is to just meet someone in town with a set up :) - that way I can avoid all of this.

I've posted things upthread recorded with the Blue Yeti (120 new but you can def find a ton of these used on ebay, got mine for 80 on craigslist)
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=857749&gclid=Cj0KEQiA8MSkBRCP5LaRlcOAusMBEiQAiqldkgFeoLzZuCr_Hg1GQ03TBk1qSggFdqEqo5fQpNn1jLgaAgF98P8HAQ&is=REG&Q=&A=details

you can hear the stuff i've done, which is minimally processed, a bit EQd and maybe compressed slighty with some audicity plugin reverb on it, but overall I'd say USB mics have come a long way

of course, I'm just plotting about how I want to get a USB DAC/Mic pre unit and a better XLR mic so I suppose one is always unsatisfied.

gonna check out yr new thing neal! i've dug the rag lore things i've heard so far.
just got hipped to this thing via soft abuse's twitter -- maybe it was mentioned on the old thread? https://moonbros.bandcamp.com/album/frijolillo - kind of low-key/dreamy/fieldrecording-y/acoustic action. i like it!

Neal there is also a USB model of the Blue Spark which is supposed to be great on acoustics

Well it just always falls into that sort of formless wandering thing complete with that kind of cool but kind of shitty electric guitar sound. Framed it as a problem because I honestly wonder if I'll ever be able to focus enough to "compose" something ever again or if I'm cursed to forever jam aimlessly in avant post-primitivism mode with wacky tunings.

Welcome, friend hah hah.

My movement out of these waters a bit is finding myself being interested in the texture and phrasing that you can exaggerate a bit more by playing loudly. Kind of find myself almost playing "noise" at times but don't think of it that way while I am doing it. Just kind of finding some of that territory that you can to where the freeform, wandering notes start to take on a life of there own via feedback/overdrive/fuzz etc. I have been really enjoying it!

was exploring this global radio google maps overlay, where you can click on a station anywhere in the world and stream.

http://radio.garden/

was randomly clicking around oceania, landed on what turned out to be easter island. they were playing PETER LANG. absolutely one-in-a-million chance. i took lessons with the guy! he is not particularly famous!

wow that's wild

we should put on a american primitive/psych/weirdo fest on easter island

Neat site! Love Peter Lang... wonder how he is doing. Always confused when reminded that The Thing At The Nursery Room Window is not as sought after as one might think.

grandavis- sounds like fun! Though it also sounds a little like what someone says when they're essentially stumbling upon shoegaze? Like, the good'n messy experimental post-punk version of shoegaze not the glossy version.

Also yeah my brain ignored your actual point... easter island? WTF/cool.

Speaking of stylistic overlap and islands in the middle of the ocean I really love slack key guitar too.

that site is fucking amazing

it really is

we might need a thread for that site, finding some great stuff. favorite so far is 'dago radio sound' in the capital of madagascar, been playing some unidentifiable rap and now some local folk music

agreed ^ i just immediately went to stations i already know are great. would love to see a running list of folks' discoveries...

Radio.Garden - Streamable Global Radio Google Maps Overlay

Hah yeah Evan you are correct that this "move" is not new either, which goes back to the original premise that "playing guitar is a problem" hah hah. I was more suggesting as someone who has played for a long time and finds myself in patterns that aren't always easy to break out of, this shift has been interesting as it has taken phrases and habits of mine that were feeling pretty set in stone at times and put them in a new light. Hopefully it does not sound like shitty shoegaze without the rest of the band hah hah, but I mean it might.

Yeah for sure! It's a good tip. I'm so very much not a gear head though so I am shy about playing with knobs since I don't have good luck getting the sounds I want. Someday I'll "find" some cool new-to-me effects and have a blast and it'll jostle me out of my typical mode. In the meantime my Canyon pedal is my favorite to fool around with.

here's my big roundup of recent guitar things ... not sure if any of it will be new to y'all, but maybe!
https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2021/02/16/transfigurations-2021-recent-recommended-21st-century-guitar/

Nice roundup Tyler, definitely a couple of things in there I have not checked out yet. Also just lots of good stuff, I am into more than a few of these.

The Canyon pedal looks cool. I keep thinking about getting a real reverb pedal, as seeing Jon Collin live (electric version), and being a fan of Loren Connors, makes me want to have way more options there than I do (my amp has reverb and is OK but nothing like the depths you can get with a good pedal or other options). Probably will at some point.

cool primer on Takoma that highlights a couple obscure releases I was unfamiliar with

https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/takoma-records-retrospective/

Nice! I love that Homegas record nice to see it highlighted.

I re-listened to that Homegas record earlier this year and I think I came away with a wider appreciation of it. I probably last listened to it like 10 years ago and the fast songs (like Bumblebee) were the ones that appealed to me. I was pretty surprised how nice the songwriting is on the more traditionally "folky" tracks; now that I've come more around to that kind of stuff.

Also, was just cruising through the Takoma discogs page to jog my memories and came across a release page for a mispress that combined the B side of Blind Joe Death with the A side of The Alan Parsons Project's I Robot, lol.

https://www.discogs.com/The-Alan-Parsons-Project-John-Fahey-I-Robot-Volume-1-Blind-Joe-Death/release/16058078

out now, really good, I think FE might have vinyl copies

https://feedingtuberecords.bandcamp.com/album/matthew-j-rolin

oh FFS wrong link, sorry, this is the new one:

https://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/matthew-j-rolin-the-dreaming-bridge-2lp/FTR.586LP.html

super psyched for this one, rolin has been on a rol lately

the powers/rolin on trouble in mind and the powers/rolin/gercyz on garden portal are both really good

https://cameronknowlereliwinter.bandcamp.com/album/anticipation

Dusted: Two young guitar hot shots take up residence in a Houston studio to share their love of finger-picked folk, slide blues, bluegrass and Michael Chapman.

sorry to jump back to the previous convo, Dinsdale ... i opened that link and will listen, but:

Many here know this world *much* better than I do (and have listened to it much more than I have), so I'm curious: Rolin (at times) gives me stronger Jack Rose vibes/feels than maybe anyone else. Agree/disagree?

Daniel Bachman
Axacan
Three Lobed
7 May 2021

There has never been an album quite like Axacan, guitarist Daniel Bachman’s latest double LP. By defiantly playing against type and creating an album that, sonically and compositionally speaking, has more in common with Pierre Schaeffer or Edgard Varèse than John Fahey or even Jack Rose, Bachman has crafted one of the most introspective and deeply personal albums of instrumental music released in recent memory.

Axacan weaves together acoustic guitar and harmonium alongside raw material from various locations, events, and natural phenomena to create a conceptual three-dimensional collage. Using everything from field recordings of church bells, frogs, and birds to treated radio broadcasts, dead pine trees, and tuned fishing wire, Bachman has both honed and mastered the compositional technique hinted at on 2018’s The Morning Star. As on that album, the guitarist’s approach on Axacan is both documentary and authorial, utilizing electroacoustic techniques, organic drones, and environmental sounds to enrich his exhilarating music. These sounds are deployed reverently; there is very little superficial “sound for sound’s sake” here. Each creak, clatter, or bang colors Bachman’s aural Polaroids with deep and personal significance.

The keening and spooky “Blues In The Anthropocene” is a prime example of Bachman’s compositional framework: sounding at first like a lost, ethereal Guitar Roberts side, the piece’s accompaniment by the sound events of rusted tools being throw into a dumpster, high pitched feedback from a radio broadcast, and a storm on Bachman’s familial homestead Ferry Farm—a reputedly haunted plantation and Civil War battlefield once occupied by George Washington—provide a kind of orchestral menace. The piece ends abruptly, as if the room from which these sounds were emanating was suddenly struck by lightning, leaving only the lonesome sound of rain. “Year of the Rat” begins with a plaintive, unhurried exploration of a guitar tuning, hearkening back to Bachman’s earlier LPs; soon, the playing begins increasing in tempo like a person hurtling deeper and deeper into anxiety recounting a traumatic event before settling down, as if tranquilized.

The epic and ominous “Blue Ocean 0” mixes lapping waves, polysynth, fiddle, and tape machine, as well as the sound of wind blowing through fishing line and tuned to a harmonium drone, to convey the grim scientific epoch theorized in its title. “Big Summer,” too, masterfully integrates Bachman’s indisputable guitar prowess with a sense of calamitous menace: the sound of an unaccompanied acoustic slide guitar is heard emanating from what sounds like a waterlogged, malfunctioning cassette, the tremulous vibrato supplied by the limitations of the warbling tape. The effect is like hearing some lost country blues literally unearthed from the soil.

On “WBRP 47.5,” we can make out, amidst radio dial surfing, a brief snippet of dialogue:

“…it might be some time before things can…”

The voice abruptly cuts off before we can hear more, though we hear this same sample repeated a few minutes later, suggesting that this is less a mere exercise in knob-turning than the evocation of a time loop. The chilly ambiguity of the message, and the accompanying rustling of a dead pine tree slowed to match the pitch of the drone and fiddle, only reinforces the dread. As the radio sounds fade, pained roars evoke immolation, turbulence, the death of a bellowing beast. Bachman follows this with album highlight “Coronach,” a probing 12-string rumination that stands as Bachman’s most accomplished and beautiful guitar piece in years.

By carefully selecting and meticulously editing the album’s many extra-and-non-musical sounds, Bachman imbues the music with both a sense of place and a sense of purpose, chronicling a search for meaning, hope, and truth in haystacks both figurative and literal. It is no mean feat to produce a largely instrumental album that somehow deals directly with the crises of our time—climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, the lingering effects of colonialism and genocide—and make it intimate and personal, but Axacan is such an album, a spiritual cousin of equally apocalyptic masterpieces like Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima,” William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, and Lou Reed’s Berlin. Great works of art such as these can often leave you breathless, but they do something else, too: they can leave you changed.

-James Toth
If you have any questions, contact nathan at riotactmedia.com.

he powers/rolin/gercyz on garden portal

I got this LP for my birthday. I hadn't heard of it before but it's really nice acoustic drone.

I didn't know there was an LP version! that's cool. I have the tape.

Yeah, the LP was released last month.

no idea who this is but really really like this, very atmospheric

https://blackbrunswicker.bandcamp.com/album/temple-of-spring?fbclid=IwAR2h9_cd42HQCBV3msdXe6rqa91u65MAMruGWsgwVx18textAdFW95P6ZpM

Loving this- thanks!!

Scratched the same itch as this has done for me, albeit not as ambient:

https://4theyemusick.bandcamp.com/album/anthony-pasquarosa-morning-meditations

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/arts/music/solo-guitar-diversity.html

nice piece! too much on the "and here's why" on the lede but maybe that's unavoidable

yasmin williams album didn't grab me, too windham hill for me. lots of folk whos taste i admire like it though, maybe need to give it another shot

it engages fairly easily which is nice. after i played it for her, my partner has gotten several of her junior high classes and private music lesson students into her. the "she looks like me" factor really matters to these kids and of course it does.

nice article — I like some of these players more than others, but I think Gwenifer Raymond sums it up well: “Representation matters — that’s just true. The music can only get more interesting.”

speaking of which, just got the new sarah louise album and it is VERY interesting. she continues to have a weird/cool trajectory.

wow yeah it's great. some of her other left-field moves didn't grab me, but i am way into this. not to speak for her, but based on the 1,000 roses fest, part of me imagines that she's thumbing it to the old codgers in attendance there, wonderfully recounted by UMS way back when

ugh is 'grab me' the only thing i can think of to say in lieu of 'i liked this music'

global - I've thought that several times that I think that specific day changed the trajectory of her career

when I and (our bandmate MB) went to see Itasca we were buying her record and I mentioned we had seen her there she was like "yeah that whole thing was weird"

Do you look back on it negatively? I think besides the silly Q&A drama nothing else seemed too off to me honestly.

BTW by then Sarah was already on her way departing from the tropes of that genre, exhibited by her performance at that festival (was overtly not "American Primitive" in any identifiable way).

no I had one of the best times of my life, the whole thing was great. and the general vibes were very positive. just some of those really old codgers seemed to have some axes from like 1966 to grind

but again i wasn't a woman on that particular panel, i feel like that could really sour someone on the whole thing

oh for sure, you're right, her thing was way more..free jazz? frankly, i appreciated the gesture more than the actual performance (didn't really seem to go anywhere for me, jazz is hard it turns out)

yeah her post-solo guitar stuff has struck me as cool, but not quite getting there. this new one gets there, i think.

just discovered my new favorite singer songwriter with some thread relevant content

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms71XrEx_cY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xe1jA6G-Qk

for the past several years, i've gone to the Pickathon festival near Portland (Oregon), and one of my favorite little games to play is noting which of the artists on the bill i see at the most *other artists'* sets. (poorly worded, but you know what i mean.) a few years ago, Sarah Louise won by a landslide; i remember watching her get *deeply* into Kikagaku Moyo, Circuit des Yeux and Milo (aka RAP Ferreira), to name a few

i remember randomly finding that guy on spotify (probably how most people find him), his ouvre was singing about cleaning the toilet at the time. glad to see he's expanded his reach xp

A message to the Spotify musician The Passionate & Objective Jokerfan (aka Matt Farley)

ah should have figured there was already a thread

xp oh good I was waiting for this generation to finally produce its very own Wesley Willis