On Monday morning, September 11, 2001 I was on a train from Orange, NJ to Hoboken which got me to the PATH train, then a walk underground to the subway which brought me to Court Street in Brooklyn where I’d walk to work at Dan’s apartment. I usually made this trip 3 days a week, sometimes more sometimes less. At the time, we were living in East Hanover but our house on Dogwood Lane had gone on the market this morning.
Did you? I did and man o man am I glad I did. These two tiny tracks moan with beautiful longing from the guitar and voice of Liz Harris/Grouper who is quickly becoming another - have to buy every record I can find – kinda deal for me. Simple yet overfull and powerful.
I also ordered the recently re-pressed A I A: Alien Observer from the new Mississippi online distributor Little Axe Records. This 7″ is long gone and my guess is, just like every other record Liz Harris makes, Alien Observer will soon be too.
From Editions Mego comes another strangled symphony of mangled strings from Bill The Guitar Killer Orcutt. The press release says, “While a lot of it is the classic face melting style, some quieter segments counter balance on the title track as well the epic closer ‘A Line From Ol’Man River’ and ‘Heaven Is Closed To Me Now’”. ‘Face melting style. I like that.
Jesse Lort is Case Studies and he was one half of The Duchess and the Duke whose record Sunrise / Sunset endeared itself to my inner ear after repeated listens. The World Is Just a Shape to Fill the Night is Lort’s solo outing and its sad, slow, forlorn and heart-torn. “I started writing the songs for this record when I was still married, and the most recent song was written on my 32nd birthday.” A bunch of friends joined Lort in an isolated cabin in the Washington woods, “Milana, Julia, Nicolas, Keegan, Greg, Suzie, Lisa, and Andrew came to the cabin to contribute to the album and take photographs and video. I wanted friends to join me because making records had always been a lonely process for me and I was ready to change that dynamic.” Available in a standard LP edition and “Limited edition includes hand-silk-screened wrap-around sleeve, alternate cover art, silk-screened poster and wax seal. Hand numbered in an edition of 150.” From Sacred Bones.
Michael Lueckner took five years to make this record and it sounds like another beautiful journey. Toyko is an old favorite and here he mixes in acoustic instruments and vocals form Christina Kühne to weave his travelogues, “It’s Sweet To Do Nothing is intentionally impressionistic – the listener is requested (and inspired) to think about Monet, Sisley, Degas, Pisarro – landscapes, lakes, people in motion.” OK then! Off we go, sort of – “Dolce farniente” – that’s what they say in Italy. It means “It’s sweet to do nothing.” I am so Italian in some ways. Originally released in 2007 on CDr, clairecords brings us this new CD. Yea CD. Guitar doesn’t do vinyl, yet?
Great album title! for what sounds like machine-world become self-aware (and its none too happy about it). Boomkat says, “Absolutely killer, squashed & f*cked technoid mutations – the best Spectrum Spools yet* A few months back we clocked Emeralds synth wizard and Spectrum Spools curator John Elliott claiming on Twitter: “container lp on spectrum spools is like surgeon on DMT covering cybotron jams with a bubble machine”“. Mimaroglu says, “that said, i can see this as an attempted spear-head move towards yet another post-noise idiom (or, a “high street” / mass-market version of something that’s been a bubbling zeitgiest for the past few years ; anyone who’s spent time in cf’s basement recently knows where this is all headed) that’s probably one of the more apropos issues belying parent-corp emego’s origins in the “anti-dance-music” miasma of the mid-90’s …” Aquarius says, “As most techno can give the impression of being so easy with so many digital sequencers that you can run from a smart phone, it’s nice to hear something this angular and groovy.”
Anne-Lise Berntsen / Nils Henrik Asheim Engleskyts
I first heard Engleskyts on NPR while driving home from Brooklyn. This was back in 2003 and I was working with a friend, Dan and I heard this one track “Nu Rinder Solen Op” and it struck me as one of the saddest and most lovely things I’d heard in some time. So I went online and ordered the CD from KIRKELIG KULTURVERKSTED in Norway. A few weeks later I got a call from someone in town saying they had a package for me. I drove to their house, it was set back off the dirt road so far you couldn’t see it, and when I knocked on the door, there was no doorbell, it took a while for someone to answer. A woman, it was difficult to tell her age since it was dark inside the house and on the front porch even though it was a sunny day, opened the door just enough to slip a CD-sized package from Norway through the opening. I said thank you, she said nothing and quickly closed the door.
I’d like to think it had something to do with being physically imposing but I’ve never really managed to pull that one off. I just think she just wasn’t used to strangers knocking on her door to pick up CD-sized packages from Norway.
This CD was recorded in the chapel of Weissenau Convent near Ravensburg, Germany November 1993 and it consists of selections of verses from Norwegian religious folk songs sung by soprano Anne-Lise Bernsten accompanied by NIls-Henrik Asheim improvising on those old pipes. I mailed my original Engleskyts CD to someone I thought would appreciate it but I never heard whether he did or didn’t. That door never even opened.
From “Den yndigste Rose er funden” (The most delightful rose is in bloom),
The most delightful rose is in bloom amidst the stiffest thorns: Our Jesus grew up among us sinful creatures. we were all doomed to die, but God let a rose break out to make good the poor harvest of our ways. The world ought to rejoice, but some have not even realized the rose is there.
Seek out the basest places, that is where you will find Jesus, our rose. Its sweetness pleases me. Let the thorns tear me and hurt; I will never want to lose my rose.
Besides reminding me Vanessa Redgrave in Ken Russel’s fantastic The Devils, the mix of pleasure, pain and overt sexuality within these lines brings a Sade smile to my face.
I had a feeling just from looking at the cover. JD did too, especially after seeing the vinyl. I’d been waiting to get a Hank Williams record, passing over dozens of cheap copies until I found one (cheap copy) that just felt right. This was it.
