Monthly Archive for December, 2007

Brief glimpse into the latest Digitalis cdr subscription series, ‘Arroyo’

Published
by
sean
on December 5, 2007
in feature, podcast and review
. 2 Comments

Bottling Smoke was Digitalis Industry and Phantom Limb’s first experimental, field-folk festival, featuring the many of the best acts contemporary ambient/experimental music has to offer. Festivals are a dime a dozen these days, some good, some not so good. Bottling Smoke, though, was something special. From an outsider’s perspective, the numerous collaborative performances were the highlight of the festival and a fitting reflection of the communal backbone vital to the contemporary micro-label culture. One glimpse at the Brad Rose or Grant Capes (festival co-curators and Digitalis/Phantom Limb masterminds, respectively) discography is evidence enough of this empowering, internet enabled, globalization of independent, self-produced music. As explained by Sir. Rose, Bottling Smoke was a chance to bring these artists together for the first time, who had previously only been able to collaborate remotely. Tragically, I was unable to attend, so my take on all this can’t be terribly insightful.

Fortunately for me though, Digitalis has produced and recently released the first slew of disks in their new ‘Arroyo’ cdr subscription series. ‘Arroyo‘ is apparently intended to capture and communicate some of BS’s wonder and magic for the rest of us, the geographically deprived.

Continue reading ‘Brief glimpse into the latest Digitalis cdr subscription series, ‘Arroyo’’

 
icon for podpress  Arroyo Series (Oct) excerpts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (131)

Big Blood highlight at WFMU

Published
by
sean
on December 3, 2007
in filler
. 1 Comment

WFMU’s Scott Williams has a splendid new Blast of Hot Air posting up this morning detailing the spectacular work of Big Blood. In a sea of mediocre folk karp and psyche sardines, Big Blood are an agile musical cetacean. Scott does a splendid job of exploring the pair’s musical origins, their recent work as the husband/wife duo Big Blood. Colleen and Caleb have a new release out with Michael Gira’s Young God imprint as Fire on Fire (mp3). Oddly enough, I stumbled across the WFMU post accidentally this morning, shortly after checking the Fire on Fire sample I’d starred a couple weeks ago based off an enthusiastic AnimalPsi update. I immediately recognized the similarities to Big Blood, but wasn’t able to deduce this meant the two projects were related. Stars apparently aligned, and my aimless web browsing dropped me directly into Scott W’s BoHA entry, a posting I probably would have skimmed over in my reader.

Here’s some of what Scott had to say about BB:

Big Blood is clearly in full thrall to whatever demon god of creativity squirrels around under the dirt up there in South Portland, Maine among the loons and the decrepit oil tanks. Rhythmically hypnotic, with a lot of melody and instrumental density; broadly considered a “psych-folk” band (fair enough), it has been suggested that Big Blood have actually tripped over some long hidden threads of indigenous Americana to discover a trove of musical and folkloric delights that somehow fossilized and disappeared, centuries ago. It sounds so “Evil Dead”, doesn’t it? It can be — but it can also be intensely and heartbreakingly warm and moving…

 
icon for podpress  Big Blood - Oh Country (with the Bleeding Hearts) [5:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (636)

(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.)

The stars have aligned here, compelling me to pay closer attention to Big Blood, and Colleen/Caleb’s related musical projects in the future. Scott’s post graciously includes two brand new unreleased (and predictably splendid) tracks from Big Blood, in addition to a studio video recording of some sort. If you enjoy the psyche-folk in general, or have enjoyed the more popular offerings from the highly publicized freak-folk movement and enjoy off the radar music, you are obligated to use this opportunity to sample Big Blood. For another sample, check out one of my older podcasts, which culled a track from that ‘Space Gallery & Sahara Club’ release. Big Blood and Cerberus Shoal’s releases are still available for purchase at North East Indie. I would recommend (at least) ‘The Vim and Vigor of Alvarius B and Cerberus Shoal‘ (WFMU archive sample) and ‘Space Gallery and Sahara Club‘ (refer to previous sentence).

…and just so this post isn’t completely lacking in new substance, check out another youtube Big Blood offering after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Big Blood highlight at WFMU’