I found this CD in a small shop full of musty vinyl, fanzines, crates of tapes, and neatly arranged homemade and self released CDRs on a recent trip to Portland, Maine. I had no idea what kind of music I would find on the disc, but liking the cover, I took a stab at it. I did remain skeptical knowing next to nothing about what I had just purchased. What I found was a very humble and unassuming album of non-pretentious lo-fi folk meanderings. On listening my attitude of skepticism quickly relaxed under the pastoral melodies Jeremy Pisani coaxed from his acoustic guitar.
Spirit of Orr (CDR) / Streamline (LP)
The mark of a true artist, whatever genre they are working in, musical or otherwise, is whether or not their creativity blossoms within the boundaries they have set for themselves. It is easy to be limited by the trappings of any given style, and yet a trope can also be twisted and made gnarly, giving its fans the pleasure of hearing a new take on it. Pisani uses his acoustic guitar, his submerged and warbling voice, deeply buried in the mix, along with other elements of the newly weird as a focal point for crafting his song meditations. No fly by night kind of guy, it was an album he took his time with, ensuring the highest quality, recording these songs between 1996 and 2003. Listening, I get the feeling that he played with these recordings a lot, tweaking, listening, and readjusting, rerecording. I can see him in my imagination: in a bedroom or a basement, with a handful of cassettes and a four-track trying to get the sound just right. (I have no clue as to his actual recording methods, but I do find the image of a lone musician with a four-track a romantic one.) The final result is more than the sum of its parts.
There is not a bad song on the album. This is as it should be considering the amount of time spent on making it. “Green Hill Beach” is one of the high points. Starting off with a field recording of the ocean surf, it moves from gentle picking and humming into more deranged territory with a vibrato laden and reverb saturated electric guitar that sounds like a birds death cry, before fading out with blissfully plucked chords full of warm tremolo. “Flight,” which follows, is also a favorite. Here the full-bodied keyboard and airy flute takes precedence while the stocattoed-guitar adds the accent marks. Pisani is not averse to using samples and found elements either, as he does halfway through “Agrippina”, seamlessly blending in a national anthem or marching band tune to great effect.
Red Favorite’s debut is a very solid effort, and hopefully not his last. The limited run of 300 CDs from Spirit of Orr in 2007 is now out of stock but Streamline via Drag City released the album as an LP in 2008, the form for which Pisani originally conceived the album.
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