For Poor David’s Almanack, Rawlings leaves the Dave Rawlings Machine moniker behind and serves up a wry mixture of acoustic and electric music rich in ageless American vernacular. The album of ten new songs was captured by studio wizards Ken Scott (Beatles, David Bowie) and Matt Andrews on analog tape during a week of sessions at legendary Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Rawlings and longtime compatriot Gillian Welch
Read more →Archive for the Genespeak – The Cranky Dubmaster Category
While Moreland isn’t exactly copping a rosy outlook on these songs, there is more of a positive vibe that’s in keeping with the upbeat music. “Old Wounds” doesn’t avoid talking about the hard times, but it also advises to “find the heaven following the hurt.” On “Salisaw Blue,” a noose hanging down from the sky is balanced out with a neon sign flashing out the album’s title phrase.
Read more →Each release is newly remastered from the original analog tapes, and will contain the original OK COMPUTER twelve track album, eight B-sides, and the Radiohead completist’s dream: “I Promise,” “Lift,” and “Man Of War.” That’s right, the original studio recordings of these three previously unreleased and long sought after OK COMPUTER era tracks finally receive their first of official issue on OKNOTOK!
Read more →After spending much of the last two years on the road, relentlessly showcasing their critically acclaimed 2015 self-titled debut album, the six bandmates of Banditos regrouped in late 2016 at Plum Creek Sound Studios in Dripping Springs, TX and democratically poured out sonic influences and emotionally charged personal experiences for their new album Visionland. Produced by Israel Nash and Ted Young, the Birmingham/Nashville-based group’s second full-length has one foot firmly planted in reality as the other tip-toes in and out of mental complexities, self-perception and altered-state illusions.The results are revealing, exhilarating and profound. The album-titled track reveals these defining, cohesive thematic intricacies.
Read more →“We at Horizon remain super-energized by what Jason Isbell brings, the sound of his crack band, the 400 Unit, and what this all means to the music scene. Hell, he just sold out 5 nights at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in less than two hours! It seems the wider world has discovered (at last) that so-called country music goes way beyond formulaic “get drunk-cheatin’-pickup-truck-Wal-Mart”-style country.
Read more →Don’t bother asking The Mastersons where they’re from. Brooklyn, Austin, Los Angeles, Terlingua; they’ve called each home in just the last few years alone. If you really want to get to know this husband-and-wife duo, the better question to ask is where they’re going. Perhaps more than any other band playing today, The Mastersons live on the road, perpetually in motion and always creating. Movement is their muse. On tour, in the unpredictable adventures and characters they cross,
Read more →In December 2016, after more than a year of touring, songwriter Joan Shelley, together with guitarist Nathan Salsburg, headed to Chicago, where they joined Jeff Tweedy for five days in Wilco’s studio. Spencer Tweedy, home from college, joined on drums, while James Elkington shifted between piano and resonator guitar. Jeff added electric accents and some bass, but mostly, he helped the band stay out of its own way. “He was protecting the songs. He was stopping us before we went too far,” Shelley says. Indeed, half of these songs on the album that resulted are first takes.
Read more →The rise of Americana music has struck a nerve with Crowell. “I have declared my loyalty to Americana. It’s a hard category for people to get their heads around, or at least the terminology is. But all the people who represent it—Townes van Zandt, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and more recent stars like John Paul White and Jason Isbell—share a common thread, and that thread is poetry. Whether they are actual poets or their music exemplifies a poetic sensibility, generally speaking, the Americana artist shuns commercial compromise in favor of a singular vision. Which resonates with me.” There is also a powerful undercurrent of the blues running through the record. “Recently, I think—I hope—that my study of the blues is starting to show up in my music. Those artists, whether it’s Lightnin’ Hopkins or John Lee Hooker or the acoustic Delta players, connected to something fundamental. With that in mind, I’m trying to move forward but also get back there.”
Read more →GARLAND JEFFREYS has been making provocative, personally charged urban rock and roll since the late 1960s. He started out in Greenwich Village performing highly respected songs that reflected on life as a multi-racial man in America. ‘14 Steps To Harlem,’ the third album in six years by this ‘beloved rock-soul-reggae singer-songwriter’ (New York Times) has released on his own label Luna Park Records. Produced with James Maddock with core band members Mark Bosch, Charly Roth, Brian Stanley and Tom Curiano, guest spots by Brian Mitchell and Ben Stivers, a gorgeous duet with daughter Savannah and a radiant violin solo by Laurie Anderson, this record delivers what fans have come to expect from Jeffreys: edgy immediacy and literate, emotionally raw lyrics coupled with a still supple voice capable of singing in a practically limitless number of styles.
Read more →Since 2004, Volker Bertelmann – aka HAUSCHKA– has, steadily earned a remarkable reputation as a purveyor of imaginative, distinctive, prepared piano music. On What If – which finds him adding player pianos (also known as pianolas) to his arsenal – Bertelmann expands his range even further, defying expectations and delivering what is without a doubt his most ingenious album yet. While engaging with his trademark technique of utilizing unusual objects – art erasers, for example – to treat (or ‘prepare’) the piano,
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