Little Earl was one of the first tracks I brought to The Sea Drift rehearsal sessions, and as it turns out the one that helped create the sound and feel of the entire record. It’s a soul/Tony Joe White inspired groove, and Cory Gray’s horn and string arrangements set the cinematic tone for two brothers who get into a shoplifting-gone-wrong incident at a mini-mart outside of Port Arthur, Texas. I love songs that just drop you in the middle of a scene and that’s what we tried to do here.

The Sea Drift

Little Earl

The Delines - Little Earl

The Long Winters - In The Light

Laura Veirs & Mount Analog - The Ocean

The Builders and The Butchers - Black Dresses

Remote Tree Children - Wanton Song

Shelley Short & The Sure Shots - Wish Someone Would Care

Calamity Jane - Miss Hell

Viva Voce - Devotion

Sin Ropas has always made the familiar strange, creating postpartum pop music that unravels and spins out of control in a shatter of rusty beats, scratchy vocal harmonies, raw guitar, found sounds, made-up instruments, and electronic experimentation. It has the timbre of lost love and the redemption that follows it. If this all sounds a bit uncomfortable, that's because it is–their music is at once longing and revelatory while also unnerving and confounding.

This idea prevails in their latest release, Mirror Bride (Jealous Butcher 2016). On this record, Sin Ropas’ fuzz and blur is tightened into something beautifully sparse and rangy thanks to mixing by Brian Deck (Red Red Meat, Modest Mouse). These are bright, searing, imperfect songs that, as the title suggests, may seep into those places that you've been trying to forget or to hide. There’s a catharsis in its splattered slow party of music, in its untethered rhythms and evaporating melodies, music that suggests that there’s more than what we’ve seen or will see, how things seem more meaningful when reflected than in reality. Mirror Bride is the kind of record that reveals itself slowly and evokes the kind of experience you didn't even know you were missing.

Sin Ropas - Broken Beaches

Slow Moses comes from Phoenix, Arizona. Charity Binge is a record made in an experimental rehearsal/recording space called the Dressing Room (or Droom) that sits across the street from a municipal mental ward in Downtown Phoenix.

When there’s some sun-stroked, meth-addled guy screaming at the pavement near the patio of a restaurant, who gets called? Insanity isn’t a crime, at least not formally... but still, the police come hush the lunatic, shepherd him into Crown Vic and take him away. They drop him off at the ward. He gets screened. No budget for fixing all the broken people in Arizona. Let him loose. He’s got no clue where he is. No money. No ride. He hears amps pushing sound out an open door around midnight. He walks toward it and sticks his head through the threshold to find five guys drinking, smoking and playing music. They all notice him looming, but they don’t stop playing. When he makes a move to enter, they still don't stop playing. When he finds a seat... even still, they don’t stop. He’s got shelter for a second. He’s allowed to be there. It was a romantic idea, an open-door policy. It went awry.

Slow Moses - Teenage Sun (part 2)

Slow Moses - Oh Bembaya

The second album by former Heatmiser co-leader Neil Gust.  Expanded and remastered this edition includes 2 unreleased bonus cuts; "WXYZ" is from the original album sessions and "Who's Behind The Door?" was recorded with Elliott Smith at his studio in LA with John Moen (Decemberists, Eyelids) on drums.

What Does Good Luck Bring? - RSD 2017

No. 2 - Who's Behind The Door?

Unraveling takes you on a sonic journey - and while the chilly Alaskan landscape sets the stage, the album reflects an emotional landscape describing search, love, despair and hope.

This album came about when the Portland Cello Project was commissioned to record an EP for an upcoming tour in Alaska coinciding with Spring Breakup, when the ice begins to melt and makes otherworldly sounds. Annalisa (who grew up in Alaska) and Gideon (an expert in otherworldly sounds) found they had a wellspring of inspiration.

Fog on a Glacier represents the cloudy mist navigated in search of companionship. Midnight Moon is the dance of love when you think you may have found what you seek. Pep and Sway is the unbridled joy of love found at last - leading unfortunately to the Unraveling that so often follows the euphoria. Are You Happy Now? is the seething questioning of why things never seems to work out right. Wind and Snow is a wistful reminiscence and longing for tender feelings that slipped away followed, inevitably, by the murky despair of The Mud Flats. Over and Over mulls over the loss, the repeated mistakes, the dream you can’t escape and Moonlight Stroh is a quiet echo of the early optimism for love you once enjoyed. Night Sky is the inward acknowledgement of the end and acceptance of the change that has come leading to Spring Breakup, a moody transition away from the loss and toward something unknown, hopeful and beautiful.

Uraveling

Annalisa Tornfelt & Gideon Freudmann - Midnight Moon

Annalisa Tornfelt & Gideon Freudmann - Fog on a Glacier

Since its inception, the music of Portland, Oregon’s 1939 Ensemble has always explored the relationship between rhythm and melody.

On the quartet’s new EP Beats & Saints, that connection — between pulse and phrase — is turned inside out. The record finds vibraphonist José Medeles, percussionist David Coniglio, trumpeter Josh Thomas, and guitarist Knate Carter in a loose, playful mode, interpreting songs by Charles Mingus, Björk, the Breeders, and Stereolab, alongside two new 1939 originals.

Melodic, surprising, and rhythmically dense, Beats & Saints finds the band teaming with experimental music legend Ralph Carney, known for his work with Tom Waits, Bill Laswell, Jonathan Richman, and Martin, Medeski, and Wood, and any more, along with Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tinariwen). Demonstrating the band’s inside humor, a Korg Rhythm 55 drum machine also receives a “guest” credit. Hunkering down in the 1939’s own B-Sides Studios, the band and guests indulges in the time-honored tradition of musicians simply blowing off steam, seeing what happens when combustible elements are combined.

“We tried to have fun with it — that was the most important thing,” Medeles says. “There was a sense of ‘How far do we take this thing?’”

The answer ends up being “pretty far out.” Opener “Bullseye” strings together noir cinematics, G-funk grooves, and thick ambience. Next, 1939 takes on Björk’s “Pluto” nudging the song forward by with a heavy synth bass under Thomas’ electronically treated trumpet. On Mingus’ “II B.S.” — “You gotta be crazy to play a Mingus’ song without a bass,” Medeles laughs — the combo translates the song’s familiar melody to vibes, Carney’s sax adding a bawdy heft. The original “Illinois Lead Shot” and Stereolab’s “Percolator” prove exhilarating workouts of the band’s cool jazz/lounge sensibilities, and the band’s take on “Off You,” Kim Deal’s classic from 2002’s Title TK — Medeles played drums on the original — feels like an audible swoon, Klinghoffer and Carter locking in together with liquid guitars over shimmering surf motifs. “Our tip of the spear is making music we really enjoy,” Medeles says. “We hope that translates to people out there. I think this record’s a cool snapshot into 1939’s world.

The record is an example of open collaboration. “It was such a great energy,” Medeles says of the band’s collaborations with outside musicians. “It was really about friendship and energy as much as anything.” Since 2013’s Howl & Bite, recorded by Coniglio and Medeles as a duo in 2010, 1939 Ensemble has expanded its parameters with each release, adding members like Thomas and Carter as time’s gone on. Beats & Saints finds that expansion playing out stylistically, tying together and ultimately transmuting disparate threads of groove, noise, and rhythm. It’s a casual assemblage, “a nice collage of songs,” Medeles says, but a picture of a band “recording music in their own space — in their own terms.” The resulting recording is a demonstration of that sonic vocabulary used to stun and wow — the musical equivalent of a friend laying some knowledge on you just because they know you’ll like it.

Beats & Saints

1939 Ensemble - Percolator (Stereolab)

1939 Ensemble - II B.S. (Charles Mingus)

1939 Ensemble - Pluto (Björk)

Electric Guitar is the Boxhead Ensemble boiled down to it’s core. Electric Guitar is the manifestation of simple ideas captured in the early morning hours - first idea, best idea. Electric Guitar is an exploration of timbre. Fender style guitars and an old Gibson amp where used to record Electric Guitar. If I kept and aural sketchbook it would sound like Electric Guitar. Electric Guitar is an homage to the seven pivotal years I spent in Chicago from 1994-2001. Electric Guitar is presented on vinyl in a limited edition of 33 copies. Electric Guitar is Electric Guitar.

Jealous Butcher Records

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