Hey kidz,

 

Most of our time lately has been dedicated to getting things ready for the Alan Sparhawk & Vlor to hit stores next week.  Kind of oblivious to the real world in the haze of stickering & packaging discs.

 

Plumerai has a collection of remixes of their song "Illuminati" called Illuminated available for just $2 at www.getnicestudios.com

 

Below are a some recent reviews.

 

hrt
Brian John Mitchell

 

VLOR: A FIRE IS MEANT FOR BURNING
Vlor was originally the guitar duo of Silber Records chielf Brian John Mitchell (Remora) and his best friend, Russell Halasz experimenting with drones, loops, and reverbs between 1992 and 1998, culminating in the “Lavished” (1997) and “Luxate” (1998) EPs. The project ended when Halasz moved to Florida in ’98. Mitchell decided to revive the project last year while preparing archival releases for his label, so he sat down and composed and recorded nearly an hour and a half of guitar riffs and arpeggios and farmed them off to half a dozen friends and label mates to complete. So the release is essentially prepared by a virtual band comprised of Aarktica’s Jon DeRosa, Lycia’s Mike VanPortfleet, Rivulets’ Nathan Amundson, Red Morning Chorus’ Jesse Edwards, 6P.M.’s Paolo Messere and vocalist Jessica Bailiff. The delicate opener “Trust In Weapons” sets the table for a feast of minimalist guitar pluckings, drones, and sound manipulations, whereas “Wires” is a true supergroups extravaganza, with input from everyone (but VanPortFleet). The title refers to the guitar upon which Mitchell plays his base drones which he saved from a fire and restrung with steel wire. The sonic results are akin to the “Wire Music” collaborations between Alastair Galbraith and Matthew De Gennaro.
As a huge fans of DeRosa’s work, I’m partial to his collaborative efforts here, which are among the most sedate on tracks like “Weakening Blows” and “Light At The Speed Of Sound,“ where he fills in the spaces between Mitchell’s original notes with complimentary strokes of glistening beauty. “Horses In Deserts,” as expected, gallops along and, whether subconsciously or not, actually did remind me of America’s “Horse With No Name,” as in, “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.” “Potential New Sound” is a fluffy bed of electronic feathers…a marshmallow overcoat of Amundson’s keyboards, Bailiff’s acoustic guitar, Edwards’ Indian instruments and Messere’s percussives.
The album works because, despite the rudimentary two-note riffage of a lot of Mitchell’s source material, his decision to have multiple collaborators adding layers onto his framework gives the album a full-band sound, making for an eclectic, yet exciting listen that might have otherwise languished in boxes like millions of other guitarists’ personal noodlings and peripheral creations.
Bailiff’s breathy vocals on “Suncatcher” add an element of warmth, although I’m still impressed with the soft reflective, stroll-through-the-woods atmosphere of tracks like “Pale Lights” and “Days Like Smoke.” Overall, a beautiful album for late night or early morning navel gazing.
~ Jeff Penczak, Foxy Digitalis

 

Of much more interest is Vlor. It started out in 1992 by Brian John Mitchell (of Remora) and Russel Halasz, playing acoustic guitars and releasing two EPs. They separated in 1998 when Halasz moved to Florida. In 2005 Mitchell was compiling a 'best of rare material' and thought he missed doing music as Vlor. So he recorded ninety minutes of guitar riffs and sent it to six different friends, asking them to complete them as songs. These six are Jon DeRosa (of Aarktica), Mike vanPortfleet of Lycia, Nathan Amundsun (Rivulets), Jessica Bailiff, Jesse Edwards (of Red Morning Chorus) and Paolo Messere (6 P.M.). Each of these players added a trademark of their own, such as violin, vocals, keyboards, more guitars and harmonium. You could think that this would lead to a very diverse bunch of tracks, that holds somewhere in between a remix and a rework, but there is a strong coherency among the twelve pieces. Firmly rooted in the more experimental corner of postrock, melancholy is lurking about in every track. Sometimes it stays close to the original minimal playing of Mitchell, but things work best when they are expanded into the format of a real song, with extended instrumentation. Though post rock is by itself a dead end, music wise, the Vlor is more than well crafted, a labour of love and friendship.
~ Frans deWard, Vital Weekly

 

More hazy daydream music on the same label comes from Vlor, basically a tool for label boss Brian John Mitchell to make music with some of the friends he admire the most. The process behind A Fire Is Meant for Burning started with Mitchell recording 90 minutes of guitar riffs and arpeggios that he sent to six friends (Jon DeRosa of Aarktica, Mike VanPortfleet of Lycia, Nathan Amundson of Rivulets, Jessica Bailiff, Jesse Edwards of Red Morning Chorus and Paul Messere of 6P.M.) for completion. Despite being primarily based around the guitar we get a varied listen that includes as much pastoral string massage as primitive walls of sound hitting you right in the face. My favorite track is possibly “Suncatcher,” an all too brief, downcast slice of dream pop that reaches the heavens much thanks to Bailiff’s vocal contribution. Nothing of all this is that original but there’s still something about this disk that makes it difficult to escape.
~ Mats Gustafson, The Broken Face

 

ALAN SPARHAWK: SOLO GUITAR
More guitar music comes from Alan Sparhawk of Low who on his album length solo debut Solo Guitar (Silber Records) blends glacially moving and somewhat minimalistic guitarscapes with strands of glistening noise. Quite often the tracks tend to start on a slow and intimate note before moving right into a tsunami of feedback, a wall of breathtaking dissonance. All in all it’s enough to transport one to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and back again in a matter of minutes.
~ Mats Gustafson, The Broken Face

 

Low's guitarist Alan Sparhawk finally decided to release a full-length. The thing is I was in for a pleasant shock when I first heard this record. This isn't a record of someone who's been in a rock band for the last fifteen years or so. The guy has made a conscious decision to break off from the past and start from scratch. Literally, what he's doing with this record is reinventing himself. Sounds this man comes up with are more reminiscent to sustained glory of Loren Connors than anything else. Long passages [two pieces clock in at the 13 and 18 minute marks] of blissful, drawn-out notes make for a listen that is as challenging as is rewarding. To be fair, there's a lot more to Sparhawk's mastery than just long sustained notes. I hear references to Fahey's back-country blues in places as well as a more ambient version of the long-gone British trio Loop [though, admittedly, he's much more relaxed than anyone from Robert Hampson ever was on the guitar]. "How a Freighter Comes into the Harbor" softly establishes an eerie atmosphere that is full of elongated notes that beautifully drift on and on and on without a visible end, only near the end to be interrupted by a scraping sound resembling a freighter train's wheels scraping against rusty rails. What a beautifully descriptive sound this is. Like a perfect illustration in the dustbins of your mind, the sounds held here bring forth the pictures you forgot in the first place. As with all good things in life, unfortunate thing is "Solo Guitar" comes to an end before its potential is completely realized.
~ Tom Sekowski, Gaz-Eta

 

On the day the newspaper tells me Gyorgi Ligeti is dead, I see him referenced in the press message for the CD by Alan Sparhawk. It made me think to play Ligeti again. Just a wild guess: I don't think that any other solo instrument got more CDs than the guitar. It's just a guess. The press blurb says its 'in the vein of underground stars like Aarktica & Reynols as well as guitar heroes like Eddie van Halen (incidentally hailing from the very same town as Vital Weekly). Alan Sparhawk, of Low fame (to some, not here, ever since I heard their cover of Joy Division's 'Transmission'), plays guitar in an improvised manner and adds a high dose of reverb to the sound, 'allowing a greater immediacy'. But the reverb is used simply too much, making it very high end like, and creating an artificial depth, rather than a bass depth. I must say the reverb builds to large walls of sound, but it also ruins the music, which could have perhaps been 'warm' and 'intimate', if the choice of sound effects would have been more delicate. Van Halen returns in 'Eruption by Eddie van Halen', but instead of the original super fast, Sparhawk slows it down, letting each note die out, before turning an engine on. A bit like Low did to 'Transmission'. Next time a real solo guitar, please, and not a duet of reverb and guitar.
~ Frans deWard, Vital Weekly

 

It’s unfortunate that Alan Sparhawk chose to give his first album apart from Low such a bland title. Calling it Solo Guitar makes it seem like an exercise, a frivolous release of aimless noodling with the focus on the player and instrument rather than on the music. In reality, it’s a frightfully powerful experience, with Sparhawk caressing and torturing his instrument to produce a fantastic collection of minimalist guitar that unfolds like a terse yet evocative short story. Eschewing any kind of recognizable structure, Sparhawk indulges in elemental fragments of sound with long, droning expanses interspersed with frantic, thrashing fits of colic and foreboding silences that contain an unsettling emptiness, like the quiet drawing back of water that precedes a destructive and crushing wave.
In only a minute and a half, “How the Weather Comes over the Hillside,” simmers quietly and emblazons Sparhawk’s intentions firmly and distinctly upon the stark canvas of silence. “Sagrado Corazon de Jesu” leaves behind the brevity of the first track, with a persistent drone establishing a fertile bed, out of which well-spaced squalls emerge like lightning-flashes, burning and blazing for nanoseconds and leaving their afterglow hanging in the senses long after they’ve dissipated. It’s a physical experience as much as an aural one. The low-frequency tones are felt in the bones long before they rattle the eardrums. These sounds aren’t simply being played or coaxed from Sparhawk’s instrument; they’re being wrenched free as if through struggle.
“Sagrado,” along with a heavily deconstructed and disassembled cover of Van Halen’s “Eruption” are the only digressions from the larger theme of the album. That theme, of a battered and bruised freighter skimming across dark and endless seas toward safe harbor only to be torn asunder by pursuing storms, only explicitly exists in the extended song titles. Despite the obscure framing, those songs, anchored by the seventeen-minute “How a Freighter Comes into the Harbor,” are a remarkable triumph of suggestive storytelling and highlights the potential that minimalist composition can have in the hands of cautious and attentive composers.
While Kawabata Makoto’s 2002 experiments with the Tsurubami and Rebels Powers charted similar territory but seemed to pointlessly spin their wheels, Sparhawk realizes the importance of firm control over his output. Like fellow minimalists 1 Mile North (who also explore the austerity of a harbor on the magnificent Conduction Convection Radiation collaboration with The Wind-Up Bird and Colophon), the music on Solo Guitar is imbued with narrative subtext and informed by thoughtful plotting that gives it more impact than any lyrical treatment possibly could.
Solo Guitar is challenging and requires that listeners surrender their expectations, allowing themselves to be completely submerged. While some may find it uncomfortable at first, the level of development at work on this album is a thrilling treat, and such fine musical and artistic experiences are not to be ignored or avoided.
~ Michael Patrick Brady, Stylus

 

This is one of the more interesting things I’ve yet heard from the always interesting Silber Records label.  Alan is best known for his work as an integral part of Duluth-based slowcore pioneers Low, and for his more recent rockier sounds with the Black-Eyed Snakes. This ranges from gently subtle ambience, to gracefully evocative Popol Vuh-like mystic atmospherics, and loud scorching pyrotechnic lava flows. There are nine tracks; the longest is almost eighteen minutes, the shortest, just under a minute. It feels like Sparhawk is enjoying the unlimited landscape of possibilities presented by these solo guitar instrumentals. He continually shifts his approach to playing, a couple tracks recall Tom Verlaine’s instrumental work, elsewhere it’s more like Tom Carter, but it’s far more wide-ranging than any easy comparisons would allow.
~ George Parsons, Dream Magazine

 

KOBI: DRONESYNDROME
This sophomore release from Norwegian artist Kobi certainly lives up to its predecessor.  This album runs more like a movie sondtrack than "a collection of great dance songs" or something to that effect.  While lacking in obvious musical scales, the songs form more of a landscape of tones, percussives, haunting keyboards & aching, ghostly squeal just beyond the perspective of the listener.  They have an incredible gift for the use of loops without being repetitive, if you can believe such things are possible.  This is a definite for the Ant-Zen & World Serpent listeners out there, & one of the best in Silber's Catalog.
~ Poseidon, Gothic Beauty

 

IF THOUSANDS: I HAVE NOTHING
This ambient duo has now produced six discs since their unusual entry into the ambient music world when this classically trained vocalist/guitarist & punk bassist dropped their known instruments to create music on instruments they didn't know how to play.  Give me instruments I don't know how to play (which means any instrument not made by Hasbro) & the result could at best be charitably described as excruciating, usable as a weapon of mass destruction.  I'm sure they've come a long way since that initial concept, learning rudimentary grasps of the many instruments they use & using familiar ones as well, because I Have Nothing is certainly nothing if not musical.  They've also taken a couple of other unusual approaches as well, using all relatively short track lengths & recording the entire disc of improvisations in two days.  Considering the fully achieved creation of atmosphere, the latter is a striking achievement.  There's plenty of variation from track to track, some stark & foreboding, some lush & inviting, & some inbetween.  This variation emphasizes the short song aspect of the disc, yet there's a continuity at play that brings it all together.  Part of this continuity is due to the use of standard intruments like guitars, bass, banjo, accodion, horns, & cello for everything from lead voice to drones.  Electronic equipment is used as well, but the acoustic instruments seem to dominate & heighten the sense of individuality while serving to engage the less driftably inclined listener.
~ Mac Beaulieu, Expose

 

Rounding out the second Submission this month from Silber is this haunting release by If Thousands.  Slide guitars gently breathe against sitar-esque tones in almost heart-breaking beauty.  This is a very, very moving album.  This is very much a free-flowing album of tones & textures, but the use of acoustic instruments over the top gives it such a human, organic quality, you almost feel as if it's speaking to you.  It's hard to identify ones-self personally with an instrumental piece, but with this album, the seemingly-impossible becomes real.  A must-have.
~ Poseidon, Gothic Beauty

 

Hailing from Duluth, MN If Thousands' two main members are Christian McShane & Aaron Molina, & I'm pretty sure this is release number six.  This is a remarkably deep & beautiful record, & unusual for this genre, the IT boys have kept the pieces short.  Horns & strings coexist alongside the electronics on a set of dronescapes augmented by very real sounding instruments.  Kranky label fans, take note.  What this music does so successfully is envelope you.  Really.  Sure, you can nod off to the spooky wintry sounds.  But listen closely, & be rewarded with tracks that flirt with eastern sounds (the sitar on opener "Push") or the dramatically different "Crispin Glover," with its carnival-like atmosphere.  This is fifteen tracks of "musical art"... that you can daydream to.
~ Michael Pearlstein, The Big Takeover