Rock - what are you listening to?

[jadarin]

Just got this double Lp yesterday and it's stunning too!




Hallock Hill - The Union/A Hem of Evening



http://hallockhill.com/video/ - listen, read and watch



Words:

A Hem of Evening

Forthcoming double LP with The Union on MIE Music. Summer 2012.

"These pieces were recorded last summer, a few months after the release of The Union and just after the release of There He Unforeseen. In the wake of the latter, I felt the need to go back to the acoustic guitar and revisit some of the central themes and methods of The Union: overlapping improvisations, twisted melodic weavings, and a limited palette. What came, though, was something much more naked and spare. Where some of the tracks on The Union were built around the idea of continually stacking great density of sound and involutions, the tracks on A Hem of Evening worked with a different geometry. Air and space. Expansion of themselves within themselves, rather than an expansion coming from additional voices. I also, admittedly, wanted to prove to myself again that I could craft something solid around my explorations of a single instrument. On The Union you will hear several different acoustic guitars at work. On Hem, I stuck with a single guitar: its voice heard throughout, and as such this album is as much a celebration of the sound of this one instrument as it is a collection of improvisations around a theme.

Not that it matters what I think of my own creations, but if anything I feel them as physical entities. As bodies entwined. As families walking through the woods. As children swimming in the lake, or sliding down a hill. As people in the bar talking with and through one another. But my opinion really doesn’t matter, nor does it matter where they came from. They’re gone now. And perhaps they are with you. If so, many thanks."

A book of photographs and prose poems based on these pieces accompanies the LP.

Dermot here's a link to Hallock hill..http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=& ... 3w&cad=rja

[cybot]

Just got this double Lp yesterday and it's stunning too!




Hallock Hill - The Union/A Hem of Evening



http://hallockhill.com/video/ - listen, read and watch



Words:

A Hem of Evening

Forthcoming double LP with The Union on MIE Music. Summer 2012.

"These pieces were recorded last summer, a few months after the release of The Union and just after the release of There He Unforeseen. In the wake of the latter, I felt the need to go back to the acoustic guitar and revisit some of the central themes and methods of The Union: overlapping improvisations, twisted melodic weavings, and a limited palette. What came, though, was something much more naked and spare. Where some of the tracks on The Union were built around the idea of continually stacking great density of sound and involutions, the tracks on A Hem of Evening worked with a different geometry. Air and space. Expansion of themselves within themselves, rather than an expansion coming from additional voices. I also, admittedly, wanted to prove to myself again that I could craft something solid around my explorations of a single instrument. On The Union you will hear several different acoustic guitars at work. On Hem, I stuck with a single guitar: its voice heard throughout, and as such this album is as much a celebration of the sound of this one instrument as it is a collection of improvisations around a theme.

Not that it matters what I think of my own creations, but if anything I feel them as physical entities. As bodies entwined. As families walking through the woods. As children swimming in the lake, or sliding down a hill. As people in the bar talking with and through one another. But my opinion really doesn’t matter, nor does it matter where they came from. They’re gone now. And perhaps they are with you. If so, many thanks."

A book of photographs and prose poems based on these pieces accompanies the LP.

Dermot here's a link to Hallock hill..http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=& ... 3w&cad=rja

Thanks a million for that John :) I know next to nothing about his earlier stuff. No sleep tonight ;)
Just downloaded one of his albums! My first ever download from bandcamp! Thanks again John :)

[cybot]

On a long sold out vinyl copy. Sublime....




Clint Heidorn - Atwater (Ltd. to 125 copies)



 
A new dude self releasing his first album on vinyl with killer packaging, you should already be paying attention. Heidorn is making some stellar tunes on Atwater, channelling a sparser Dirty Three or a dustier & less gloomy Jakob Battick. Truly awesome stuff here. I see it getting labeled a lot as black folk and even black ambient, and I guess, for lack of a better word, I might as well. But this isn’t black. It’s hardly even dark. Sombre? Certainly. But this doesn’t conjure any woodland specters or rain the plague down on your soul. It’s an earthy minimalism, guitars, strings, reeds, and a slew of noisemakers echoing in the trees, sprawling out over the leaves on the forest floor. Chill as f##k and absolutely amazing. And as rad as it is using “tree bones” to adorn your hand tinted record jackets.




http://clintheidorn.bandcamp.com/ - download for $3.00!!

Just downloaded this.Sounds really good on first listen..

Brilliant stuff :)

[cybot]

Jeff Beam:Be your own mirror.


In a rather surprising disc, Jeff Beam, in his debut Be Your Own Mirror, covers quite a bit of progrock territory, from a sublime David Gilmour mellifluous cosmic country vibe to manneredly hard-charging hurtlers to early Gong era explorations to Neu pulses to Beatles-esque montaging to…well, wherever his fertile and oft quasi-symphonically minded imagination takes him. In many ways, Mirror reminds one of some of the cooler 60s and 70s Waring Blender bands, ensembles eager to push limits and hybridize modes—here not as radically as, say, Amon Duul II, but certainly of more note than the West Coast Pop Art Band and others in the ilk, which, of their own, were absorbing and intriguing anyway.

Whispering Poison in his Ear, track 1, hits the rustic territory Gilmour covered so beautifully pre-Dark Side of the Moon while also incorporating Radiohead bric-a-brac, and the atmosphere established tends to be the home base of Beam's work though it soon soars into the skies in a mellotron-ish blend of radiant beauty. Congratulations on your Latest Achievement, on the other hand, is the streamlined crunchy cosmiche I referred to and drops into a smoothly insistent pace that boogies the backbone while firing up visions. Then drop back and follow the narrative of Part Two, an unclassifiable cut constituting a trip through old Balkan climes decorously appointed with woodlands and quaint hostels, part Cafe Orchestra but mostly Long Hello.

Steve Hillagesque riffs pop up and I several times caught strong Gary Lucas tendencies, especially during Successful People who Never Existed. There are change-ups all over the place, and this guy can go from mid-fi noiseur-interesting to way cool hi-fi cosmic sympatico in the blink of an eye. Beam is pals, and tours, with Cuddle Magic (here), and, yeah, I can definitely see why. That pairing would be a gig worth seeing, heady expositions in how to break the rules, acknowledge no boundaries, still create melodics and entrance the audience no matter what genre it might favor. And not only does the cover sport one of those cool exact reversal mirror-photos, but the disc artwork is a very pleasing Escherine pseudo-tessaract composed of Barclay James Harvest-style butterflies (but, er, those scrawly credits……yikes!).
http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=& ... Uw&cad=rja

This is great John! Yet another one to discover and dissect :)

[cybot]

More vinyl delights....



Dean (McPhee) told me that Michael recorded this using the 2.5 watt Roland Micro Cube!!


This is from an earlier period and much better than his current stuff....

[cybot]

More vinyl heaven...

[fergus]

On vinyl....

[cybot]

On vinyl....

Is it still a night to remember? I recall being very disappointed with it when it came out first especially with BR towering over everything! I still have a couple of their early singles but that's it...

[fergus]

On vinyl....

Is it still a night to remember? I recall being very disappointed with it when it came out first especially with BR towering over everything! I still have a couple of their early singles but that's it...

I really liked it at the time Dermot and still give it an occasional listen. It was the only Queen album that I ever bought.

[fergus]

On vinyl....