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As you lay on your back in the deep grass on a shadowy late-summer afternoon…tracing the outlines of patterns on the inside of your eyelids illuminated in translucense beneath the sun….ruminating, drifting in and out of sleep. Your dreams flirt with the irrational fears of the dark, of being left alone, of infinity…of being lost in corn fields reaching taller than the sky, of the comfort of feet dangling in a cold lake and splinters from running on a sun-dried summer dock. The world once felt new and alive…now through a haze, lost from the opacity of time.

Ohio is a new project from of 12k founder Taylor Deupree and long-time label-mate and collaborator Corey Fuller. The genesis of Ohio, besides the desire to work on a full album together, was them realizing they were both born in the US state of Ohio, not far from each other, and spent their earlier years crafting young memories there before moving away. This ended up being a simple, but interesting point of departure for the project because these early, hazy memories provided compelling conceptual roadmaps for the album as well as become inspiration for the song titles.

With no lack of irony the project started with a playful cover of singer/songwriter Damien Jurado's "Ohio." Deeply loved by both Deupree and Fuller, covering this song liberated them from working in their traditional "ambient" comfort-zone, challenging them with new structures and new directions. Their version of "Ohio" slowed the song down and explored acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, harmonies, pop-centric song structure, field recordings and a plethora of subtle studio fun (the looped clicking motor of a Roland RE-201 Space Echo being used as a "hi-hat" of sorts) and layers.

The project expanded from there and moved gradually as they very much felt working in the same physical space was important to its core. Writing, overdubbing, mixing and editing continued as the two found time to make the journeys between Tokyo and New York to share a studio. Each visit the songs would become more refined and be pushed into new and unexpected directions. A cathartic intensity found its way into the music echoing the intensity of life but at the same time remaining grounded.

The four years spent creating Upward, Broken, Always resulted in an album that engages the dichotomy between ambience and intensity. The hazy reworking of Jurado's "Ohio," or the duet for acoustic guitars recorded in the woods outside of Deupree's studio contrasts with the surprising, beautifully intense swells of overdriven guitar. Faraway drums and Fuller's ghostly vocals further expand the sonic image.

During one of their final editing sessions, with the accidental muting of musical tracks, the interludes at the end of each LP side were born. Fragments of preceding songs, stripped to a ghostly minimum like those distant Ohio memories.

Upward, Broken, Always is released in online formats and as a limited edition of 125 double 12” LPs. The LP art features an aerial photograph of the state of Ohio as well as the barn from Deupree's childhood home inside the gatefold jacket. There are 3 sides of audio on the release with Side D of the 2nd record being a full-side graphical etching of a topographical map.

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 27 October 2019

Hits: 4120

A 10-cassette anthology housed in a handcrafted wooden box and featuring:

Kleistwahr
Neutral
Pinkcourtesyphone
Alice Kemp
She Spread Sorrow
G*Park
Relay For Death
Francisco Meirino
Fossil Aerosol Mining Project
Himukalt

The collection stands as the 50th release for The Helen Scarsdale Agency, plunging through the depths of post-industrial research, recombinant noise, surrealist demolition, and existential vacancy.

Curation and fabrication by Jim Haynes
Audio mastering by James Plotkin
Liner notes by Drew Daniel, Emily Pothast, Jim Haynes, and Donna Stonecipher

Release date: November 22, 2019

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 26 October 2019

Hits: 4158

Over the past decade, the visionary musician Arthur Russell has entered something close to the mainstream.

Sampled and referenced by contemporary musicians, his papers now open to visitors at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center in New York, and his name synonymous with a certain strain of tenderness, Russell is as widely known as he's ever been. Thanks to Russell's partner Tom Lee and to Steve Knutson of Audika Records, who have forged several records from Russell's vast archive of unfinished and unreleased work, the world now hears many versions of Arthur Russell.  There's the Iowa boy, the disco mystic, the singer-songwriter and composer, and the fierce perfectionist deep in a world of echo. While all of these elements of Russell are individually true, none alone define him.

Now, after ten years of work inside the Russell library, Lee and Knutson bring us Iowa Dream, yet another bright star in Russell's dazzling constellation.  Blazing with trademark feeling, these nineteen songs are a staggering collection of Russell's utterly distinct songwriting. And although Russell could be inscrutably single-minded, he was never totally solitary. Collaborating here is a stacked roster of downtown New York musicians, including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Saltzman, and David Van Tieghem.  Musician Peter Broderick makes a contemporary addition to this list: more than forty years after Russell recorded several nearly finished songs, Broderick worked diligently with Audika to complete them, and performed audio restoration and additional mixing.

Several tracks on Iowa Dream were originally recorded as demos, in two early examples of Russell's repeated brushes with potential popular success—first in 1974, with Paul Nelson of Mercury Records, and then in 1975, with the legendary John Hammond of Columbia Records.  For different reasons, neither session amounted to a record deal.  Russell kept working nearly up until his death in 1992 from complications of HIV-AIDS.

At once kaleidoscopic and intimate, Iowa Dream bears some of Russell's most personal work, including several recently discovered folk songs he wrote during his time in Northern California in the early 1970s.  For Russell, Iowa was never very far away. "I see, I see it all," sings Russell on the title track: red houses, fields, the town mayor (his father) streaming by as he dream-bicycles through his hometown.  Russell's childhood home and family echo, too, through "Just Regular People," "I Wish I Had a Brother," "Wonder Boy," "The Dogs Outside are Barking," "Sharper Eyes," and "I Felt."  Meanwhile, songs like "I Kissed the Girl From Outer Space," "I Still Love You," "List of Boys," and "Barefoot in New York" fizz with pop and dance grooves, gesturing at Russell's devotion to New York's avant-garde and disco scenes.  Finally, the long-awaited "You Did it Yourself," until now heard only in a brief heart-stopping black-and-white clip in Matt Wolf's documentary Wild Combination, awards us a new take with a driving funk rhythm and Russell's extraordinary voice soaring at the height of its powers.  On Iowa Dream, you can hear a country kid meeting the rest of the world—and with this record, the world continues to meet a totally singular artist.

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 05 October 2019

Hits: 4439

"Circaea, the latest collaborative project involving prolific British musician Andrew Chalk (Ora, Mirror, Isolde...) debuts with The Bridge of Dreams.  Alongside Chalk in this new adventure, we find young cellist Ecka Rose Mordecai and classically trained guitarist Tom James Scott, also founder of the Skire label.  The twelve delicate miniatures that make up this album find protection in the caring arms of Faraway Press - Chalk's own label - and are a work of pure beauty."

-via SoundOhm

More information can be found here.

Parent Category: News & Events

Category: Buzz Bin

Published: 05 October 2019

Hits: 4551