Best 64 LPs of 2018 - Part 1

Aggiunto ai preferiti - part 4

1. FOLK

F 2. Contemporary folk

F CF 3. Chamber Folk

Daily Improvisations November

Forever Changes: Expanded and Remastered

Alone Again Or

Pink Moon

Place To Be

Essential - Chill Out

The Sound of Silence

Either/Or

Speed Trials

So Tonight That I Might See

Fade Into You

Lullabies To Paralyze

Little Sister

Long Slow Goodbye (Album Version)

Everybody Knows That You're Insane (Album Version)

Skin On Skin (Album Version)

Someone's In The Wolf (Album Version)

"You Got A Killer Scene There, Man..." (Album Version)

Unearthed

Hurt

Bert & John

Soho (2015 Remaster)

Stepping Stones (2015 Remaster)

Before becoming disciple to the Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang in the novel Journey to the West, Shā Wùjìng was cast out of heaven, exiled to earth, and transformed into the river monster Wujing, one of the thirteen thousand monsters in the River of Flowing Sand, plagued by philosophical questions and doubts: “I am a fool.”  “Why am I like this?”  “I am a failed celestial being.” 

Empty Editions is pleased to present Failed Celestial Creatures, an unexpected collaboration between composer-guitarist David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, The Red Krayola) and Tokyo-based musician Taku Unami. Primarily recorded in Kyoto, the album takes inspiration from the duo’s shared musical and literary influences, emerging just as much from their improvisatory explorations as from an eclectic reading list exchanged prior to the recording sessions. The album’s narrative inclinations are rooted in both artists’ previous experiments with the complex reciprocity between sound and text, including Grubbs' work with the poet Susan Howe and Unami’s collaborations with writers such as Eugene Thacker and Evan Calder Williams. Failed Celestial Creatures draws in particular upon a group of short stories by the short-lived Japanese author Atsushi Nakajima (1909-42) - perhaps best known for inflecting Classical Chinese folktales with a modernist vein of absurdist and existential foreboding - as the imaginary backdrop for its set of guitar-based instrumental explorations.

In Nakajima’s “The Moon Over The Mountain,” a mad-poet metamorphosed into a hybrid-tiger recites poetry with an obscure defect, while “The Rebirth of Wujing” sees the titular river monster self-identifying as a “failed celestial being” [堕天使]. The cryptic collapse read in both of these episodes resonates with Unami’s research into the etymology of the chinese character “堕,” meaning “to fail” in modern usage, but historically understood as referencing “sacred meat from the altar fallen on the ground.” Such a primordial scene evokes the violation of the sacred as a tacit aspect of ritual.. This failure of ritual, always a condition (and perhaps even a technique) for musicians of Grubbs’ and Unami’s ilk, can be broadly understood as the primary point of departure for Failed Celestial Creatures. Situated within this affective terrain, the album’s title-track consists of a side-long progression of dirge-like riffs enveloped by clouds of vaporous electronics - eventually erupting into unruly squalls of feedback as Unami joins Grubbs on electric guitar. The B-side features a cluster of luminous guitar duets which are beguiling in their seeming effortlessness and simplicity. Threadbare and fallen, Grubbs and Unami invoke the failed ritual, the spilling at the altar, always suggested at the precipice of sonic emergence. 

The release was recorded by Taku Unami at Soto, Kyoto, August 7th and 9th, 2017 and mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M. All music by David Grubbs and Taku Unami, published by Gastr Virgo Music (BMI). The LP is produced in an edition of 500 on 180 gram vinyl.

Failed Celestial Creatures

Threadbare 3

My newest album is out right now. Check it out plzzz


(spotify on https://open.spotify.com/album/6X7fuyEFf41IN23cYB9Eyc )
(apple music on https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/excursions/1435479668 )

Excursions

The President is Dead

The President Is Dead

01 Talking Crickets

04 The Man On The Chairlift

05 Oyster Flesh

The Hidden Man of the Heart

Someone Passed Over

2019 11 05 Utterly wrong

2019 11 11 Schlitter

2019 11 13 Glitter

2019 11 14 Flitter

aw yes minecraft music composer time

shits nice tho

C418 - Aviva

C418 - Excursions

2019 11 05 Utterly wrong

mwschneider