from "Okay Human" part of the Echomancy Tape Series from Gnome Life

OCEAN WEEZE by MEGA BOG

From "Reflections: Gnome Life Artists & Friends Cover Each Other"

Since 2005 Gnome Life Records has been steadily releasing outsider folk, dreamy psychedelia, spoken word, and deep listening records & tapes… all from a foggy mountaintop in Big Sur, California (unceded Esselen land). Reflections is a celebration of the West Coast, mystic-weirdo ecosystem that Gnome Life serves to nourish and champion.

Enshrined here, digitally and on magnetic tape, are eleven Gnome Life artists’ and friends’ fractal interpretations of one another’s works. Artists were assigned to each other “secret Santa style” and so toiled covertly in their respective bedrooms, studios, or caves – seeking out and refining the precious ore within their prescribed tune.

It is perhaps of little surprise that such a remarkable cohort of artists would dig deeply and create covers so wildly their own. Yet, we can still remark at the way entirely new arrangements are built from single ear-worms, menacing dissonance is culled from groovy riffs, and the subconscious is given voice throughout this collection.

Originally conceived to commemorate fifteen years of operation, this collection’s release was delayed by the Covid-19 Pandemic, and thus emerges in 2021 for Gnome Life’s sweet sixteen. Side A contains the eleven aforementioned covers. While the B-side presents the original recordings of each song, for your enjoyment and deeper reflection.

Little Wings - Buried on the Wind (Fletcher Tucker)

INTO THE ABYSS by THE RANGE OF LIGHT WILDERNESS

GOLD TEETH by LITTLE WINGS

from "Letters from the Forest of Nisene Marks" by Mountainhood. Gnome Life cassette exclusive for Cassette Store Day (9/27/14)!

Mountainhood - Mushroom Hunting (In the Rain)

GNOME LIFE THEME SONG by BIRD BY SNOW

from "True Prayer" deluxe LP/CD 3/24/15
http://gnomeliferecords.com/trueprayer.html

Santiparro - The Benefit Of Confrontation (feat. Will Oldham)

from "True Prayer" by Santiparro (LP+Mp3/CD)
2/24/25

"True Prayer" is a truly rare and powerful spiri-musical offering. How many other psychedelic folk albums are the product of seven years of deep shamanic initiation, spiritual pilgrimage, and total immersion in ceremonial living? The answer surely is "very few"... but now there is one at least: this LP, the debut album of New York based Alan Scheurman under the moniker Santiparro.

Santiparro - The Universe Strand

"Ever Present Calm" by Shay Roselip. LP/Cassette. February 9th, 2016. Gnome Life Records

SHAY ROSELIP beams his songs down from the Pleoades. Starlight masquerades as propulsive multi-layered guitars and woodwinds. Oceans of vintage synth tones spill out like the Milky Way. And a hushed and beautiful voice shines cool and clear, in the moonless night. This is cosmic pop for the newest age.

Ever Present Calm - Roselip’s first full-length release - is a pilgrimage through the infinitudes of outer and inner space. Deep, lugubrious bass lines, and emotionally open lyrics, cut a clear path for us to follow these complex tune-ways. Arpeggiating riffs and tonal cascades open like so many portals around us, begging the exploration of the extra dimensions that hide inside us and in these songs. 

Recorded in Bolinas, Big Sur and Inverness, Ever Present Calm is imbued with the etheric power and intoxicating beauty of California’s wild coast. This album was performed and composed by Roselip along with producer Jeremy Harris – current member of Vetiver, founder of new age music imprint Quest Coast Quarterly, and editor of the Inverness Almanac.

The first pressing of this release is limited to 220 hand-numbered copies on white vinyl, with deluxe letter-pressed jackets. The cassette edition is limited to 200 high fidelity tapes in silk-screened, cardboard tape boxes. And the album will be available via all major digital outlets.

Shay Roselip - Sorted World

from "Music Today" the debut LP by Fountainsun. Due out on Gnome Life, July 2015.

Fountainsun - Witness the Wonder

from "Music Today" the debut Fountainsun LP, due out in July on Gnome Life Records

Fountainsun - Old Pine Tree

"Light Green Leaves" by Little Wings (LP+Mp3)
Gnome Life Records
Release date: May 27th, 2016

For the last two decades Little Wings (Kyle Field) has been quietly building a kingdom of lyrically and melodically incomparable alt-folk songs. In a treasure trove of hundreds of songs and twelve unique albums, one Little Wings record sparkles with a particularly iridescent sheen… the drifter-pop, lo-fi masterpiece Light Green Leaves. 

In 2002, Kyle Field released Light Green Leaves on three formats (cassette, vinyl, CD). Each format bore different versions of the same songs in various states of refinement. The tape was solo demo recordings made on a hand-held recorder. The vinyl was loosey-goosey studio experimentation around the major themes. And the CD contained the polished precious stones. This latter, definitive version of Little Wings’ indie classic Light Green Leaves is now available on vinyl for the first time ever!

Light Green Leaves features spare and eclectic percussion, surfy electrics and sandy nylon strings, rolling bass lines, an occasional sci-fi keyboard, and Kyle Field singing along with himself in unpracticed harmonies. Compositions are assembled with care and playful intuition like tiny stick-and-leaf fairy houses. Shrink down, climb inside, and enter a fantastic inner world. 

A personal mythology unfolds in Light Green Leaves amidst naturalistic melodies and truly masterful wordplay. Whimsy is the lyrical modality of choice, but these song-poems are no less profound for their impish nature. The songs sometimes feel like nursery rhymes from another dimension populated entirely by Kyle Field. This album, and the man behind it are of the sand and surf. Just like Kyle, these tunes are open-hearted ramblers, with long sunny days tangled in their salty hair, and a constellation of roguish twinkles in their eyes.

Remastered for analog bliss by the mighty John Golden, Light Green Leaves has never sounded so lovely.

Little Wings - Look At What The Light Did Now

Little Wings - The Way I Deux

From the upcoming album "Ages" by Jeremy Harris. Available on high fidelity cassette + Mp3 on October 8th, 2016. Released by Gnome Life Records as part of Cassette Store Day.

Jeremy Harris - Release Technique II

Album: "Sweep the Temple" 
Artist: Fountainsun (Daniel Higgs & Fumie Ishii)
Format: LP/Mp3 
Label: Gnome Life Records
Release Date: December 2nd, 2016

On Fountainsun’s debut LP, Music Today, Daniel Higgs and Fumie Ishii served as guides on a multidimensional pilgrimage through the cosmos. We return, with their second album, to find our Dionysian duo not at journey’s end, but settled down within a many-chambered temple –contemplating matters of the heart and sprit; immersed in daily ritual both sacred and profane. 

As the title suggests, the central theme of "Sweep the Temple" is one of purification. Cleansing the inner and outer sanctum, primarily of limitation. Limits imposed upon us, and the Universe itself, by the very idea that we can fully comprehend the nature of reality. "Sweep the Temple" is a call to action, and an embodiment of that call. We must “sweep the temple free” each day from notions of duality, perceived separation, and the entanglements of socialized beliefs. 

Time-honored forms of expression (folk song, parable, ballad, rhapsody) populate this album but appear slightly out of phase with ordinary reality. Fountainsun employs many instruments to purify their anarchic sanctuary, including a 12-string banjo, vibraphone, marimba, guitars, drums, gongs, and even an actual broom. 

These songs coax and goad in equal measure, drawing us ever deeper into holy negotiations between sense and nonsense. Take the Dadaist deconstruction of Aesop’s Fables that comprise the lyrics of the track titled “Aesop”. In order to "Sweep the Temple" we must at times surrender narrative entirely and simply exist in marvelous uncertainty.

Aesop - Fountainsun

Album: "Sweep the Temple" 
Artist: Fountainsun (Daniel Higgs & Fumie Ishii)
Format: LP/Mp3 
Label: Gnome Life Records
Release Date: December 2nd, 2016

On Fountainsun’s debut LP, Music Today, Daniel Higgs and Fumie Ishii served as guides on a multidimensional pilgrimage through the cosmos. We return, with their second album, to find our Dionysian duo not at journey’s end, but settled down within a many-chambered temple –contemplating matters of the heart and sprit; immersed in daily ritual both sacred and profane.

As the title suggests, the central theme of "Sweep the Temple" is one of purification. Cleansing the inner and outer sanctum, primarily of limitation. Limits imposed upon us, and the Universe itself, by the very idea that we can fully comprehend the nature of reality. "Sweep the Temple" is a call to action, and an embodiment of that call. We must “sweep the temple free” each day from notions of duality, perceived separation, and the entanglements of socialized beliefs.

Time-honored forms of expression (folk song, parable, ballad, rhapsody) populate this album but appear slightly out of phase with ordinary reality. Fountainsun employs many instruments to purify their anarchic sanctuary, including a 12-string banjo, vibraphone, marimba, guitars, drums, gongs, and even an actual broom.

These songs coax and goad in equal measure, drawing us ever deeper into holy negotiations between sense and nonsense. Take the Dadaist deconstruction of Aesop’s Fables that comprise the lyrics of the track titled “Aesop”. In order to "Sweep the Temple" we must at times surrender narrative entirely and simply exist in marvelous uncertainty.

SWEEP THE TEMPLE

Sweep the Temple (excerpt) - Fountainsun

from "Cold Spring" LP/Cass/Digital - June 30th, 2017

Cold Spring

Fletcher Tucker - Dark Teaching

Fletcher Tucker - Shadow Bridge

Fletcher Tucker - I Became Smoke

Womb of Light

Womb of Light - Fletcher Tucker

RETURN by DANIEL HIGGS (excerpt)

SAY GOD by DANIEL HIGGS (excerpt)

order HERE: https://gnomelife.bandcamp.com/album/cold-spring

"Cold Spring" is an artifact of Fletcher Tucker’s deep inhabitation of Big Sur, California. Recorded gradually over the course of four years, songs were gathered on cloud-hidden peaks, wrung out from moss, and received while splitting wood, pushing through brush, and making camp. These recordings serve as trails, leading deep into a mythopoetic backcountry where forgotten mysticism and abandoned ancestral knowledge resurface. 

In arranging the soundscapes of "Cold Spring", Tucker took inspiration from Gregorian chants, Shakuhachi (zen flute) compositions, ancient Chinese paintings of mountains and mist, and of course the landscape of Big Sur itself. Analog synthesizers surge like storm-swollen creeks. A 110-year-old pump organ rumbles up from the depths of a ravine. Drones from 12-string electric guitars flicker like torchlight. Distinct aural-textures – buzzing rosined bows, resonant bells, trembling leaf rattles – punctuate the sound-world of "Cold Spring". Ethereal harmonies by Molly Erin Sarlé (of Mountain Man) drift above Tucker’s dark baritone. 

In Tucker’s words, “'Cold Spring' is an invitation to draw the blade of your mind across a whetstone of mythos and song. To hone your awareness of the uncanny, sense into the liminal, and awake within a vast atavistic wilderness.” 

"Cold Spring" is the first LP released by Fletcher Tucker under his own name. Tucker created five full-length albums and several EP’s under the project name Bird By Snow (the last, "Offering", was released in 2012). Tucker has performed on and produced records by Little Wings, Fountainsun, and Daniel Higgs. He is also the founder of Gnome Life Records.
credits

Fletcher Tucker - Descend

purchase the new LP: http://www.gnomeliferecords.com/
or digital http://gnomelife.bandcamp.com/

The mystique and beauty of Offering, the 5th record by Bird By Snow, is indebted to a deep sense of place.  Recorded and performed entirely by Fletcher Tucker – producer of recent albums by Daniel Higgs and Little Wings. Offering offers up eight completely analog recordings put to tape at various power spots in Big Sur, California – Tucker's homeland. This primordial, majestic and wild landscape is the primary inspiration for the album, and consequently Big Sur emanates from the speakers as the record spins – filling rooms with windswept ridges, fog shrouded mountains, roaring coastline, golden clearings, and shadowy old growth forests. However, this record does not present a simple, picturesque view of nature. As in the wilderness itself, dark and light appear in equal measure – storms rage and fires destroy; there is erosion, decomposition, disease and predation. The wild is vast and powerful, both fantastically destructive and creative. 

Received, written, arranged, and performed by Tucker himself, Offering is the first Bird By Snow album to not feature any guest performers or collaborations. With new freedom emerging from the isolated creative process, the album's unique structure features five song-formations with vocals and three ambient dronescapes that range from the pastoral and shamanistic to the doomed and stormy. Opener "World's Returning" signals an entrance into a world removed from modern life but perhaps familiar deep in our ancestral subconscious. 

Inspiration for Offering was also found in human stories and doings. Indeed as easily as one may visualize redwoods as the record plays you may also see and hear tools being sharpened, fires being lit, stone walls being built, and ceremony being held. The songs center around our tribal past and possible tribal future, old ritualistic relationships to nature, our potential to be truly at home in the wild, and conversely our will to change it. Offering's centerpiece "My People" draws on these themes and intrigues lyrically, but more so "My People" surprises musically with a subtle groove reminiscent of R&B's "quiet storm" sounding both soulful and elusive. Stylistically, the album continues to deliver the unexpected; the percussion on "Peering Out" coalesces into a subdued head-nodding rhythm that swings with masterful restraint, the minimal arrangements on "Wide Open" and "Grace" get the most out of each melody and word, while the naturalistic ambience of "Black Ocean" and "Before Names"  captures the foreboding mystery and tension present in the wild.

Offering sets out to reawaken an ancient consciousness, an ancestral awareness present in the land and in our selves – to give you permission to return to the familiar place, inhabited by our fore-bearers, where myth and magic are primary natural forces. This record was informed by a practical knowledge and daily relationship with the physical wild – knowing the plants and animals, walking the trails and peaks, chopping wood and sowing seeds. And these songs came forth by approaching the non-physical wilderness of Big Sur with the same respect and curiosity – through ritual, rites, and ceremony a mystic backcountry opens. 

Bird By Snow - Wide Open

This is a digital EP which we were going to release as a 7" but just decided to start giving away. These songs are alternate universe recordings of two tunes from "Songbread/Another Ocean"; "Lovers on our Backs" and "If You Wait"... respectively.

Here's what Fletcher (aka Bird By Snow) has to say: "I like to record multiple versions of songs, it feels more like they have their own lives and energies."

Recorded on 8-track cassette at home in San Francisco... pretty far-out stuff.

HELPLESS by BIRD BY SNOW

from "Visions of the Country" by Robbie Basho - LP+Mp3/FLAC reissue - Gnome Life Records
http://www.gnomeliferecords.com/visions_index.html

Available for the 1st time on vinyl for 35 years, and for the 1st time ever in high quality digital!

Robbie Basho - Blue Crystal Fire

From "Visions of the Country", originally released in 1978. Deluxe vinyl re-issue on Gnome Life Records. August 20th, 2013

Robbie Basho - Rodeo (30 sec. sample)

Fletcher Tucker - Beyond My Camp

Fletcher Tucker - Summoning

from "Be Earth Now" by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows

"I live my life in widening circles" – Joanna Macy

"How surely gravity's law" – Anita Barrows

Gnome Life Records produces analog, limited edition, and hand-made musical artifacts. Our headquarters and recording studio sit atop Partington Ridge in Big Sur, California. Nestled in an old growth oak and redwood forest, Gnome Life emanates from a wild and majestic landscape, rich in human and non-human history, overflowing with physical and non-physical power, ripe with mystery.

Gnome Life Records

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