from Hisato Higuchi "Henzai" LP on Family Vineyard (FV65). Released Nov. 9, 2010.

Hisato Higuchi - Ashi No Nai Inu

From the collaborative Mad Monk & Apache Dropout EP "My Wild Life" released as 7-inch/DL Oct. 16, 2012 on Family Vineyard. Written by John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker.

Mad Monk & Apache Dropout - I'm Not A Young Man Anymore (VU cover)

MX-80 - Christmas with the Devil

"Turkana" is the lead off track from Fountain -- the second album by drummer Kid Millions and saxophonist Jim Sauter. Kid is founding member of Oneida and the ace behind the percussion-focused Man Forever. Sauter is synonymous with the 35-year juggernaut Borbetomagus -- pioneers of sound/jazz vivisection and inexorable vision. Since 2012 these two pushed forth this magnificent grandeur, merging physical power/sweat and sculpted electricity/stretched skins. While both are known for feats of extreme artistic endurance, as a duo they opt for ferocious concentration -- a savage pop-style of density and texture.

As an omnipotent duo, neither Kid or Sauter anchors the other, instead they smash the fulcrum and spin perpetually in free-fall. Sauter extracts new techniques and structures from his howling amplified tenor sax. On “Turkana” he builds layers of gnarled drones like some goddamn Dream Syndicate lasagna, while on “Vertical Sprint” Kid weaves polyrhythms and stuttering cross-beats around/into the heart of horn shards. There's zero gravity here.

Fountain's six pieces were recorded and mixed at Spaceman Sound in Brooklyn with Tom Tierney and Alex Mead-Fox, and mastered/ cut by Josh Bonati. This LP follows the debut Boanerges CD, released on Japan’s doubtmusic label in 2013. The album is pressed on pristine 150 gram vinyl by Quality Record Pressing. Edition of 800 with download.

More info, LP/MP3/FLAC purchase: http://family-vineyard.com/products/kid-millions-jim-sauter-fountain

Kid Millions & Jim Sauter - Turkana

"Vertical Leap" is the second single from Fountain -- the second album by drummer Kid Millions and saxophonist Jim Sauter. Kid is founding member of Oneida and the ace behind the percussion-focused Man Forever. Sauter is synonymous with the 35-year juggernaut Borbetomagus -- pioneers of sound/jazz vivisection and inexorable vision. 

Fountain's six pieces were recorded and mixed at Spaceman Sound in Brooklyn with Tom Tierney and Alex Mead-Fox, and mastered/ cut by Josh Bonati. This LP follows the debut Boanerges CD, released on Japan’s doubtmusic label in 2013. The album is pressed on pristine 150 gram vinyl by Quality Record Pressing. Edition of 800 with download.

More info, LP/MP3/FLAC purchase: family-vineyard.com/products/kid-mi…sauter-fountain

Kid Millions & Jim Sauter - Vertical Sprint

"Blues No. 4" is one of the seven mesmerizing pieces from Loren Connors' 1990 masterpiece, "Blues: The 'Dark Paintings' of Mark Rothko" -- an LP originally released on Connors' St. Joan imprint in a handmade edition of 300 copies. Family Vineyard is reissuing this album on May 12, 2015. For this reissue, engineer Taylor Deupree restored the audio to Connors’ specifications of how these instrumentals were intended to sound. Cover art is an untitled 1969 Rothko work -- a painting that influenced the album.  More info: http://family-vineyard.com/products/blues-the-dark-paintings-of-mark-rothko

Loren Connors - Blues No. 4

Excerpt from a track on the Akira Sakata & Jim O'Rourke with Chikamorachi  "and that's the Story of Jazz..." 2xCD set released 9/21/11 on Family Vineyard. Chikamorachi is Chris Corsano (drums) and Darin Gray (dbl acoustic bass). 

Akira Sakata & Jim O'Rourke w/ Chikamorachi - Hanamaki (excerpt)

Title track from 1985 LP by Chicago street musician, bluesman, actor, storyteller and truth seeker known as Little Howlin' Wolf --- now reissued by Family Vineyard. Wolf is a true outsider, whose wrenching soulfulness and fire-brained intensity have been captured in a breadcrumb trail of confounding and intentionally obscure self-released records.  Cool Truth is a damaged, hallucinatory journey that radiates from a Chicago blues core. Performing most, if not all, the instruments himself -- sax, guitar, harmonica, marimba, etc. -- Wolf speaks in tongues, hollers and serenades. The 12 songs recorded between 1979 and 1983 alternate between Sun Ra-style orchestration and primitive forms to more traditional blues takes.

Buy LP/Digital

Little Howlin' Wolf - Cool Truth

Track from the "Cool Truth" LP (1985) by Chicago street musician, blues man, actor, storyteller and truth seeker known as Little Howlin' Wolf --- now reissued by Family Vineyard. Wolf is a true outsider, whose wrenching soulfulness and fire-brained intensity have been captured in a breadcrumb trail of confounding and intentionally obscure self-released records. Cool Truth is a damaged, hallucinatory journey that radiates from a Chicago blues core. Performing most, if not all, the instruments himself -- sax, guitar, harmonica, marimba, etc. -- Wolf speaks in tongues, hollers and serenades. The 12 songs recorded between 1979 and 1983 alternate between Sun Ra-style orchestration and primitive forms to more traditional blues takes.

Little Howlin' Wolf - Tears Were Fallin' Down Her Face

An excerpt from "Flying Basket" -- double album of avant jazz, discord and deconstructed rock and the debut collaboration by a pair of Japan's legendary transgressors  -- saxophonist Akira Sakata and noise pioneer Masami Akita, aka Merzbow. During the past ten years Sakata has rededicated himself to fiery free jazz alongside Tokyo-based guitarist/producer Jim O’Rourke and the rhythm section Chikamorachi -- Chris Corsano (drums) and Darin Gray (double bass, percussion). Sakata's playing remains beautiful and exploratory as it did 40 years ago. 

Akira Sakata & Jim O'Rourke with Chikamorachi & Merzbow - Flying Basket (excerpt)

First single from Loren Connors "Live In New York" album. "Live in New York" is an album seemingly simple as its title. Yet Loren Connors -- captured here in cinéma vérité quality at two performances six days apart in November 2014 -- is anything but straightforward. During the past 40 years the guitarist has not only developed an iconic sound but continues to reshape it and challenge himself, and the listener, in accepting radical permutations of the blues.

Loren Connors - Webster Hall, Part 2

Excerpt from a track on the Alan Licht's "YMCA" LP. Released as a limited LP 3/10/09 on Family Vineyard. On 9/20/11 an expanded digital version of "YMCA" is being released. This 'digital reissue' adds the 21-minute "Macy," recorded at the Stone in NYC -- an extended coda to the YMCA piece that eschews string play for a shifting wave of timbres.

Alan Licht - YMCA (excerpt)

The Red Painting is the first release of piano music from iconic avant guitarist Loren Connors. This piece combines Loren’s deeply moving palette of melody with a masterful control of pace and drama that ends with a guitar coda twinkling in the darkness. It’s wrenching as his glorious ‘airs’ or the distortion mangled screams of his blues.

The Red Painting

Loren Connors - The Red Painting

Opening track from Chris Forsyth reissue "Dreams" -- originally issued in 2009 as a 100 LP pressing. This track features Nate Wooly (trumpet) and Jamie Fennelly (synth). LP/DL to be released 12/6/2011 on Family Vineyard.

Chris Forsyth - Soft History

First track from "The Guardian," the 1982 LP by Chicago street musician, bluesman, actor, storyteller and truth seeker known as Little Howlin' Wolf. The Guardian is a baffling, hyper-creative statement recorded between 1976 and 1982. It’s also vastly sincere and some of Wolf’s most accessible and deeply emotional songs, yet it orbits a universe known only by the likes of Captain Beefheart or Albert Ayler. Reissued by Family Vineyard.

The Guardian

Little Howlin' Wolf - The Guardian

After ten years, guitarist Loren Connors returns to his much acclaimed and beloved The Departing of a Dream series. Initially based loosely as tribute to Miles Davis' masterwork "He Loved Him Madly," Connors delves further into the inspiration to explore melody as a slow-moving spectrum of shades projected against a fragile, often decaying ambience.
Volume Five continues the theme, as Connors coaxes complex blues mutations and wide swathes of distant vibrating tones -- not unlike the expressionistic cry of Miles' horn. The flutter of voices and din that seep in between the sustained notes transform into a choir as only Connors can lead.

The Departing of a Dream, Vol. V

Loren Connors - The Departing Of A Dream Vol. V Part One (excerpt)

Tom Carter and Loren Connors are a pairing so obvious, it’s a mystery how it took this long to happen. Each has traversed the American underground on their own unique path. Carter co-founded acid-folk improvisers Charalambides in 1991 and Connors has been redefining his singular vision of the blues since the late 1970s. On this debut non-titled LP, these guitar masters conjure a stunning, and at times labyrinthine, six-string tableau. 

untitled

Tom Carter & Loren Connors excerpt from LP

Dow Jones and the Industrials created roaring art-punk that collided with the confusion and celebration of technology. This track was originally released in 1980 on the "Hoosier Hysteria" LP. It's now reissued as part of the "Can't Stand The Midwest 1979-1981" anthology on Family Vineyard (FV72) released on Sept. 16, 2016.

Can't Stand The Midwest 1979-1981

Dow Jones and the Industrials - It Ain't Good Enough

Title track off the forthcoming LP by Tashi Dorji & Tyler Damon, "Both Will Escape" (Family Vineyard FV97). To be released Oct. 14, 2016.

Both Will Esscape

Oct. 14, 2016

Tashi Dorji & Tyler Damon - Both Will Escape

Dow Jones and the Industrials created roaring art-punk that collided with the confusion and celebration of technology. This track was originally released in 1981 on the self-titled 7-inch EP. It's now reissued as part of the "Can't Stand The Midwest 1979-1981" anthology on Family Vineyard (FV72) released on Sept. 16, 2016.

Family Vineyard

Dow Jones and the Industrials - Can't Stand The Midwest

Just months after reviving The Departing of a Dream series from a ten-year hiatus with the release of Volume V -- Loren Connors issues another movement of saturated guitar tones, dissonance and impermanence
Volume Six begins with the percussive sound of struck, muted strings, it's an unusually rhythmic effect for one of Connors solo recordings, writes Kurt Gottschalk in The Wire. But from there, Connors' guitar notes morph into gentle wisps of guitar sounds -- or as Connors himself describes: “just like the wind scattering the notes around."

The Departing of a Dream Vol. VI

Part Two

Loren Connors - The Departing of a Dream Vol. VI, Part Two (Excerpt)

Recorded at home in 1995. Loren Connors performs the popular Christmas carol "Silent Night" on electric guitar and his 8-year-old son Jamie sings.

Loren Connors - Silent Night

Excerpt of Loren Connors new suite for guitar and piano, Angles The Fall. To be released as LP on August 25, 2017.

Angels That Fall

August 25, 2107

Loren Connors -- Angles The Fall (excerpt)

The lead single from the expanded reissue and first-time vinyl release of Japanese musician Hisato Higuchi's startling debut. When "She" was self-released in 2003, Higuchi had been writing and performing his style of “Tokyo laborer's blues” for a decade. The delicate song textures of "She" capture the utter feeling of loneliness and a sleep-deprived mind staring off into a blurry urban sky.

She LP/CD/DL to be released Sept. 22, 2017 worldwide.

Hisato Higuchi - Girl Sister

A track from "Robert Crotty with Me: Loren’s Collection (1979-1987)," the the first anthology of the late bluesman’s work, as selected by his former playing partner, legendary avant blues guitarist Loren Connors.

Robert Crotty with Me: Loren's Collection (1979-1987)

Robert Crotty & Loren Connors -- Improvisation No 5

From Chris Corsano's "The Young Cricketer" LP. Released March 4, 2008 on Family Vineyard, FV51.

Chris Corsano - How should you pick up the ball and throw it?

Title track from "Proton Pump" -- an album brings together two icons of the Japanese avant garde for the first time on record: alto saxophonist Akira Sakata & pianist Masahiko Satoh. They're backed by Chikamorachi - drummer Chris Corsano & acoustic bassist Darin Gray. As Jim O'Rourke says, this is "NUTS." The LP/CD is out 2/2/18. Pre-order: http://bit.ly/ProtonPump

Proton Pump

Akira Sakata & Chikamorachi with Masahiko Satoh - Proton Pump

Single from upcoming The Departing of a Dream, Vol. VII -- the debut collaboration between two giants of the New York avant-garde ­-- guitarist Loren Connors and saxophonist/trumpeter Daniel Carter.

Departing (single)

Departing

Bandcamp

Loren Connors & Daniel Carter - Departing

From the Loren Connors LP "The Departing of a Dream" - a remastered, reissue of the 2002 CD. Released as LP/Digital April, 30, 2013 on Family Vineyard.

Loren Connors - The Departing of a Dream, Part 1

From the self-titled Hoi' Polloi LP - a remastered, reissue of the Richmond, Indiana band’s lone 1972 album. Released as LP/Digital August 6, 2013 on Family Vineyard / Folk Evaluation. 

Hoi' Polloi - Satisfaction Guaranteed

Established 1999. Releasing newfangled and archival sounds. 

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