MUSIC

Netherlands-based artist Jonny Nash returns to Melody As Truth with his new solo album, ‘Once Was Ours Forever.’ Building on 2023’s ‘Point Of Entry,’ this collection of eleven compositions draws us further into Nash’s immersive, slowly expanding world, effortlessly connecting the dots somewhere between folk,

ambient jazz and dreampop.

While ‘Point Of Entry’ was characterised by it’s laid-back, daytime ambience, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’

arrives wrapped in shades of dusk and hazy light, unfolding like a slow-moving sunset. Built from layers of gentle fingerpicked guitar, textural brush strokes, floating melodies and reverb-soaked vocals, moments come and go, fleeting and ephemeral.

From the cosmic Americana of ‘Bright Belief’ to the lush, layered shoegaze textures of ‘The Way Things Looked’, Nash’s versatile guitar playing lies at the heart of this album, gently supported by a cast of

collaborators who each add their unique touches. Canadian ambient jazz saxophonist Joseph Shabason makes a return appearance, providing his delicate swells to ‘Angel.’ Saxophone is also provided by Shoei Ikeda (Maya Ongaku), cello by Tomo Katsurada (ex-Kikagaku Moyo) and Tokyo acid folk artist Satomimagae (RVNG) lends her haunting multilayered vocals to ‘Rain Song.’

As with much of Nash’s work, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ deftly finds an equilibrium between softness and weight, offering the listener ample space to interpret and inhabit the music on their own terms. Through his uncanny ability to blend the pastoral and the profound, the idyllic and the insightful, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ arrives as a tender and understated offering, infused with warmth and compassion.

Every artist has to discover their voice. Gia Margaret didn’t find herself until she lost hers. With a vocal injury that kept her from singing for years, she developed other musical languages, mastering the grammar of an intricate, homey form of ambient music pioneered by Ernest Hood and perfected by The Books. Now, her physical voice healed and her artistic voice honed, she comes full circle with Singing, her first vocal album since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer. Led by soft piano lines that fall like breath on glass, the music on Singing evidences the same jeweler’s sensitivity to detail that she developed in her silence.

“There was a time when I really didn’t know if I would sing again. So once I healed, there was a lot of internal pressure to come back strong,” Margaret says. “I didn’t know who I was anymore. So it felt like beginning again, and reconnecting with these very old, old parts of myself.” This feeling of intermixed alienation and rediscovery is palpable across the album. In opener “Everyone Around Me Dancing,” she watches a party from the wings, aware of how her body keeps her from communal joy while also providing new modes of self-knowledge. Shut out from the scene, she is “closer to the ground, the planet.” In “Alive Inside,” she’s so far away from the source that she’s praying to whoever might hear (“a god, a friend that’s gone, a spirit”). As her voice rises, it seems to be trapped in a web of distortion; it’s as if in her pursuit, she’s pushing at the very boundaries of what can be said.

The process of making Singing was one of learning how to trust each of those feelings. The album was partially recorded in London with Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth, who helped Margaret unify the spree of ideas she had for “Good Friend,” an album highlight that includes Gregorian chant by ILĀ and turntable scratches, among many other things. David Bazan and Amy Millan also make appearances, as do Kurt Vile and Sean Carey, while Margaret’s longtime collaborator Doug Saltzman plays on and co-produces much of the record. Deb Talan, previously of The Weepies, lends her voice, piano, and guitar to the album's closing—and definitive—statement, "E-Motion."

Gia Margaret is always singing. Every note of this album sings a warm requiem to her past selves; every layer sings her future self into being. Across the album, she applies the lessons of speechlessness—the quasirational ways we communicate without communicating, the way formless sound can cut to the heart of things like a scalpel—to her own artistic voice.

5月上旬入荷。Meditationsでも本当に長い間に渡って愛され続ける驚異の大名盤『Romantic Piano』でお馴染みの Gia Margaret の新作『Singing』がリリース！病によって声を失った経験から2020年リリースの『Mia Gargaret』、前作『Romantic Piano』でアンビエント寄りの作風へ踏み出した彼女が本作では声を取り戻しつつあり、一方で、その静けさと優しさはさらに深まっている。数年間声を出せなかった彼女は、代わりに音で語る方法を磨き、響きの細部と感情の精度を研ぎ澄ませてきた。その感覚は今作にも受け継がれ、ピアノの小さなフレーズや静かなアレンジが驚くほど繊細に響く。楽器、機材、アレンジ、声、ひとつひとつに深い情緒を見出し、信じること。その積み重ねが、音と音のあいだの空気までも音楽として息づかせているよう。透明なピアノの響きと、ささやくような歌声、余白が大きく、全てが控えめでありながら、静けさの中に確かな生命が灯る。Gia Margaret が沈黙の先で見つけた新しい声のかたちが、静かにしかし力強く、聴く者の心に触れてくる。

'Mita Koyama-cho' offers a fresh perspective on today’s ambient music scene, blending acoustic and electronic elements into a rich, evocative soundscape. Murakami, a multi-instrumentalist, weaves together acoustic and jazz guitar, saxophone, fretless bass, and an array of keyboards—including vintage synthesizers, Mellotron, and acoustic piano. The result is a fusion of jazz, new age, folk, Brazilian music, and even 1970s progressive rock.

With an intuitive sense of melody and arrangement, Murakami layers warm cassette textures, vintage amp tones, and intricate string and saxophone orchestrations. 'Mita Koyama-cho' is a deeply personal tribute to the musician’s family and the Tokyo neighborhood they once called home—demolished in 2024 due to corporate redevelopment.

This album was compiled from original sources that have been lovingly restored and mastered. It represents a mere fraction of Connie's recorded repertoire.

Bulayo gathers extraordinary acoustic guitar performances recorded across Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and DR Congo in 1979–80 by British-Kenyan musician John Low. Travelling as a student rather than a producer, Low sought out masters of regional fingerstyle traditions, visiting and sometimes staying with artists including Jean-Bosco Mwenda, Losta Abelo and Emmanuel Mulemena, while also documenting under-recorded players such as Francis Kitime and Mtonga Wanganangu. Captured in homes, village squares and bars, these recordings are relaxed and immediate, with laughter, conversation and everyday sounds woven into the music. Far removed from studio polish, they offer a rare sense of how this guitar music was actually heard and shared. Some tracks previously surfaced on John Storm Roberts’ long out-of-print Original Music compilations; others appear here for the first time. All have been restored and remastered from Low’s original tapes by Andrew Walter (Honest Jon’s, Abbey Road). With notes and lyrics by John Low and commentary from Tanzanian scholar John Kitime, Bulayo stands as a vital document of East and Central Africa’s rich guitar traditions.

Recorded in 1988, as her self-titled debut was becoming a global phenomenon and establishing her as a new icon of socially conscious folk, this FM broadcast captures Tracy Chapman’s live performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival during the height of her initial breakthrough. Now available on vinyl, this release offers a raw and intimate look at an artist at the peak of her early powers.

Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind. Working closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes. Ernest Hood’s Back to the Woodlands will be issued on vinyl, as well as on CD in combination with its contemporary Where the Woods Begin, with new liner notes by Michael Klausman.

Originally released in 1978, Music By William Eaton is a private-press album from the accomplished experimental stringed instrument builder. The atmospheric recording techniques, mixed with a hint of Fahey/Takoma-lineage make for a listening experience akin to the mountainscape drawing represented on the album cover. The experience may seem simple at first, but like any great trip in nature, new details consistently reveal themselves upon each listen.

“When I started building instruments, playing guitar took on a whole new dimension. From the conception to the birth of each instrument, new layers of meaning unfolded. Cycles, connections and interdependencies became apparent as I contemplated the growth of trees from seed to old age, and the transformation from raw wood to the building of a musical instrument. I sought out quiet natural environments to play and listen to the “voice” of my 6 string, 12 string, 26 string (Elesion Harmonium) and double neck quadraphonic electric guitar. Deep canyons contained a beautiful resonant quality and echo. A starlit night with a full moon provided all the reflection and endless space by which to project music into the cosmos. The sound of a bubbling stream and singing birds added a natural symphonic tapestry to a melody or chord pattern. As I perceived it, everything was participating in a serendipitous dance. Everything was part of the music.

During this time, I decided to record an instrumental album of music. The idea was simple; it would be a series of tone poems with no titles or any information attached, only the words ‘Music by William Eaton.’ While some of the songs evolved out of composed chord progressions, most of the songs were played spontaneously, only on the occasion of the recording. These improvised songs haven’t been played since.” -- William Eaton

Previously released on May 20th 2014. Kikagaku Moyo here sound anything but lost, their child-like wonder manifested in a confident, courageous exploration of sound. Labels – psychedelic, folk, prog-rock, psychedelic-folk-mixed-with-prog-rock – do little to accurately reflect the spectrum of influences on display, let alone the more impactful realization of completeness in Kikagaku Moyo’s songs.

Eight songs originally released 1996 by Moll Tontrager Records and re-released on CD 1999 by The Catamount Company. ******************************************** Sarah Hennies, NPR June 15, 2023 "Strange evocations of country living are to be found on 1996's Notes Campfire." Like country music classics before, Souled American's 1996 release, Notes Campfire, is preoccupied with loneliness, longing and loss. There are cult bands and then there's Souled American. In 1988, the Illinois group arguably invented "alternative country" with the album Fe. While the alt-country sound is widely recognized as Southern roots rock with an indie-punk sensibility largely defined by Uncle Tupelo's No Depression released two years later — Souled American's early music feels as if it was formed in a vacuum, inspired by the timestretching space of reggae. But over the course of the following decade, Souled American's music grew increasingly slow, insular and esoteric. Although Fe, Flubber and Around the Horn are inarguably more accessible, upbeat and even sometimes fun, if you've never heard this music before, it actually makes sense to start at the end. Since the release of Notes Campfire in 1996, it's almost as if Souled American never existed: The band's albums have long been out of print, there have only been a handful of performances in the last 27 years (including the tiny towns of Laporte, Colo., and Centennial, Wyo.), there are no known live videos, and a long-running Facebook group of ardent fans boasts less than 100 members. Not for nothing, diehards have attempted to resurrect interest: In 1997, Camden Joy created the "Fifty Posters About Souled American" project (he ended up making 61); in 1999, tUMULt reissued Souled American's first four albums on CD; in 2006, The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle penned an essay about how Souled American's Flubber changed his life. Now, thanks to the efforts of longtime fan Tom Adelman (aka writer Camden Joy), the band's full discography is available digitally for the first time ever via Bandcamp. Driven by guitarist Chris Grigoroff's plaintive guitar strumming and Joe Adducci's skillful but idiosyncratic bass playing (consistently described as sounding "underwater") — not to mention the duo's nearly identical voices — Notes Campfire and its companion Frozen are atmospheric, languid and strange evocations of country living. It's a wonder that these songs work at all. The music is slow and loose with little regard for a consistent beat; the lyrics are poetic and frequently profound, but often cryptic and stunted. What ties it all together is the sound: Guitars twinkle and Adducci's bass slides and glides in and out of chord progressions in support of drawling, yearning and ultimately shockingly powerful voices. The eight-minute "Flat" burbles and gurgles along, always moving forward but going nowhere, evoking the landscape and feeling of their home in southern Illinois. Album highlight "Born(free)" spends most of the song repeating one line: "There's no love at all." On "Deal," Grigoroff sounds so beaten down ("The weight on me / I'm so weary") that he can't even sing in complete sentences. It's here that the band strays from Hank Williams; Souled American's narrators aren't so lonesome they could cry, they are loneliness itself. From the very beginning, the band members seemed to have the foresight that they would shrink and turn in on themselves. When Jamey Barnard left after the third album Around the Horn, Souled American simply continued as a trio with no drummer. Same with guitarist Scott Tuma — who, as a solo artist, has a sizable discography of folk-infused atmospheric music — when he split in 1996, Souled American became a duo. Reportedly, Grigoroff and Adducci have been working diligently on the follow up to Notes Campfire ever since. In a 2009 post to the Facebook fan group, Adducci's wife gave hope to its tiny but rabidly obsessed fan base: "They are working on it." Like country music classics before, Notes Campfire is preoccupied with loneliness, longing and loss, but also shares a title with the perky opening track of Souled American's debut album that begins, "I heard about your love, so you're alone today." Notes Campfire gives the impression that we've arrived back at the beginning and also reached the end. Where does the band go if they've turned inside out? What comes after when nothing is left? We've been waiting more than a quarter century to find out. Sarah Hennies is a composer based in upstate New York. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College.

For the first time this century, two missed masterpieces are coming available on vinyl. The band Souled American formed in Chicago in 1986 and recorded a total of sixty-six songs between 1988 and 1996. Though not ever popular themselves, their evolving hybrid of roots/rock music heavily influenced many more popular bands to come, among them Wilco, The Jayhawks, The Feelies, Califone, Counting Crows, The Mountain Goats, and Cracker. Their records became legendary, unavailable for decades. Some got to the Internet in 2023. Their last two albums Frozen and Notes Campfire will now be re-issued in limited, hand-crafted, 30th Anniversary Editions with a fresh abundance of stories, technical information, musician credits, and cartoons that detail the unexpected origins surrounding these two early classics of “ambient Americana.” These records sound at once both old and new with brilliant melodies and profound performances stacked in unusual patterns like soft-hued bricks.

On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the ‘70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony’s avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to lower the listener through cobwebs and murk, unveiling new life beneath Anthony’s mad old lines.

It is new life that we will need if we hope to reoccupy this cursed earth.

AKA are Anthony Moore, Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson. A pagan family of sound worshipers hailing from that unholiest of all places: Hastings UK, home of Crowley and Turing. Like their sinister forbears in that infamous tradition, this latest trinity shares a passion for subverting pattern and number, factoring unlikely permutations arising from sea and horizon, greensward, the southerly aspect, and the planisphere as half-world. Their equatorial shore speaks of a planet of water and earth, fire and air. AKA’s humble tools of choice for this endeavor are guitar, piano, organ, synthesizer and vocals.

The Friends of AKA are Tullis Rennie, trombone and electronics; Olie Brice, double bass; Richard Moore, violin; and Haydn Ackerley, guitar. They too navigate the shoreline of the south coast, haunt the same taverns and regularly play together in whatever combinations fit the bill.

Leaving the drums (and their drummer) at home to realize anew these dream-laden songs, AKA & Friends ensure that the notes fall around the beat and not on it, so as to define the pulse with absence. As such, time is liberated, prised free from the merciless clock; a rhythm of waves, passing through a steady-state universe of no beginnings and no endings. Discontinuities are dissolved, all is transition.

On Beacon Hill: Anthony Moore with AKA & Friends manifest a sensuous post-devastation lounge act, seeking to re-invoke natural orders by naming — rather than cursing — the darkness in its many guises. Like final-phase Johnny Cash on a lost episode of Twin Peaks, Anthony’s innate gravitas is a light through the surreal landscape, as the players combine themselves again and again, their efforts rising and falling in shared space. Their gothic jazz orchestra carves delicately through Anthony’s songs, releasing the melodies and the melancholy to drift upward, like smoke against a sooty and scorched backdrop.

On Beacon Hill: fantastic, prophetic journeys, dry eyed but deeply affected, through the shadow depths of Anthony Moore’s mirror. As we listen, we gravitate and journey alongside fellow refugees in solidarity and solitude alike.

Jim O'Rourke returns with his first new solo album since 2001. All the classic O’Rourke-isms are here, for you musicologist types: percolating banjos, smooth electric leads, organic, kicking drum sounds, the flickering of shakers to the left and right, mellow but ominous woodwinds, sounds that indicate “vintage” (before turning left and running out the door), sonic jokes, sonic tear-jerkers, sonic jerkoffs, all wrapped in spacious yet subtle left to right placement of everything in the picture. There’s moments of low comedy next to high drama and juicy melancholy with a seeming lack of regard for proximity. Plus―sudden surging rhythms! The Visitor is sort of “O’Rourke Does O’Rourke”―Jim re-contextualizing everything he’s done over the years, and throwing out the bullshit. The one thing you won’t hear is his voice―perhaps another O’Rourkian self-examination? Or maybe he’s just saving it for all the name-calling on his next album.

Tommy Peltier's Echo Park, compiled of unheard tapes from the early/mid 1970s, brings us into contact with a long-extinct creature — equal parts slinky hipster, universal soldier of the heart and snuggly loverman — the light-rockin’ tinseltown troubadour, the likes of which hasn’t been served around Hollywood since 1979! Tommy’s somewhere in the tuneful tradition of Rupert Holmes, Stephen Bishop, Andrew Gold, David Batteau and of course, Captain Fantastic and the Thin White Duke. His soulful songs and high-pitched vocals (he was once called “Tom Rapp on helium”) are paired with the requisite chopsy, jazz-enriched LA players, entrancing the ear with grooves and performances both tasty and sweet. Mixed and mastered with great zest by Jim O’Rourke (he brought new life to recordings of a similar vintage for Judee Sill’s posthumous Dreams Come True back in 2005), Echo Park is an encompassing trip through a whole other time and place. A trumpet player since childhood, Tommy felt no need for pop music; he’d come of age during the west coast jazz explosion of the 1950s, hearing Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker’s legendary performances at The Haig Club, just a mile west of MacArthur Park. Inspired by the departures of the Ornette Coleman Quartet, he founded The Jazz Corps in 1963, gigging all around around town, including a residency at Hermosa Beach’s also-legendary Lighthouse. Their sound was captured on a stellar 1967 Pacific Jazz release featuring Roland Kirk. Jazz was Tommy's game, but when he injured his side playing lead parts in a big band, he couldn’t blow for long without aggravating it. Something had to give. Fortunately, there was a lot of giving in those days. In ‘68, he met aspiring singer/songwriter Judee Sill. He found her energy amazing, as she played bass in a group he was sitting in with, and it quickly became clear—he and Judee were in tune! When Tommy picked up the guitar and started writing songs, she was there with help and encouragement. As the '70s dawned, Tommy was turning 35, but he was also turning the page, like so many others, to find something amazing there on the other side. Amazing music things flow freely up and down the tracklist of Echo Park. Inspired — not influenced — by Yes, Supertramp, ELO, Queen, Bowie, The Beatles and others, Tommy developed and honed his new music throughout the '70s. A handful of the cuts here were recorded between 1970 and ‘73, just a mile from Echo Park Lake, at an unassuming rear house set back in the hills (that Tommy’s been a resident of since 1966!). Other tracks were recorded at sessions in Hollywood in 1975 and ‘76, at now-obscure studios like Music Grinder and Heritage. Tommy was tight with a great bunch of guys: guitarist Art Johnson, who worked with far-out jazzers like John Klemmer, Paul Horn and Tim Weisburg, and was a member of the progressive jazz collective The Advancement; keyboardist Richard Thompson, whose studio rounds included The Association, John Hartford and Gábor Szabó; bassist Wolfgang Melz, who played with peaceful, easy folkies Hedge & Donna, Mark-Almond and Daniel Moore, plus Charles Lloyd, Szabó, Klemmer, and the psychedelically wigged Gravity Adjusters Expansion Band. Judee Sill’s on a couple songs too, as are former Jazz Corpsmen Lynn Blessing and Bill Plummer. Tommy’s first pop band, Jasmine, appear on “Here Today” — his very first vocal composition, and the earliest recording here. Lots of great times and great songs, but no contract.... which turns out to be our gain, as we release them today! Tommy has continued to play music, releasing new stuff with Plastic Theatre Art Band in 1996, and a number of releases under his own name, most recently in 2011. And at the ripe young age of 90(!), he’s still playing today! Mixed and mastered by Jim O'Rourke, Echo Park is a high-flying journey through the past.

Recorded in the early 70's in her home on a reel to reel recording device, the songs on "Colour Green" are intimate portraits of life's sad and fragile beauty.

Reissue, originally released in 1979. "This is an album that takes you on a supernatural journey to the discovery of ancient sounds that move our souls in the deepest of manners." Veronique Chalot was born in Normandy in the north of France, but it was in Paris that she first became interested in traditional French folk music. In 1974 she landed in Rome where she soon earned a small, but dedicated following. In 1979 she recorded her first studio effort, J'ai Vu Le Loup, for the Italian Materiali Sonori label. Over the past 30+ years she has given hundreds of concerts, presenting her repertoire of traditional French/Italian folk songs and building awareness of that fascinating patrimony of antique melodies and dance rhythms. She passed away unfortunately on the 3rd of July 2021. Fully licensed. LP includes inlay card featuring an exclusive essay by Emma Tricca; 180 gram vinyl; edition of 500.

In April 2024, Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich set off on a two-week tour of Japan, their first time performing in the country as Shabason & Krgovich. In an act of well-coordinated serendipity, Koji Saito of 7e.p. records enlisted Saya and Ueno of Tenniscoats, the revered Japanese duo, to tour with and perform backing band duties throughout their stops in Matsumoto, Nagoya, Kobe, Kyoto, and Tokyo.

The four could only rehearse twice, but it was all they needed. Their connection was immediate and felt in the music; their shows fluid, elastic, and just the right amount of unpredictable. Saito had anticipated this simpatico and arranged for recording engineers to meet them in Kobe, where they had a two-day stay at the famed Guggenheim House, a 117-year-old colonial-style residence that had been converted into an artist residency.

With no songs prepared, they began to play with melodies, improvising and pulling pieces from that spontaneity into wholes. Saya and Krgovich soon realized the closeness in their approach to lyric writing. From sharing Japanese nicknames for clouds while looking at the sky above a rest stop (fishscale cloud, dragon cloud, sardine cloud, sleep cloud, sheep cloud), searching for matching socks in a bin at a clothing store, to an ode to Tan Tan, a beloved panda who had recently died of old age at the Kobe Oji Zoo — they both seek out and sing to the magic in the everyday.

That’s what this experience came to feel like: magic, every day. As the group worked, they watched the Pacific Ocean advance and recede from the windows of the Guggenheim House. Over those two days, they’d compose and record eight songs, listed in order of creation, on the album that came to be called Wao.

"What is also cool about the album is that the house is very much not a recording studio so it sounds super live and because it's also right on the train tracks you can often hear the train in the recordings as it drives by. To me it adds so much charm and personality," Joseph describes. "The whole thing felt like a dream and was over so quickly so I kinda forgot about it until a few weeks after I got home. When I opened up the sessions is was really clear that we had done something special."

It all happened so quickly, an enchanting whirl. Dreamlike, they had fallen into and out of it. Only when the recordings arrived in the mail a few weeks later did that dreamy state sharpen into a memory and a moment that you can now revisit, over and over again.

In the Fall of 2022, Phil Cook found himself living alone in a small home at the edge of field and forest in North Carolina’s Piedmont. For most of Cook’s life he lived near the hearts of the towns he had called home, near the groan of traffic and hubbub of coffee shops. Such close quarters helped make the gregarious Cook a prolific collaborator, from co-founding Megafaun to working with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger, and endless others. But Cook’s closest neighbor now was a trailhead, so he went and listened, enraptured first by the stillness and then by the manifold birds. He began leaving his windowsill slightly cracked each night, so that the dawn chorus greeted him. Cook began recording these tangled bird songs, and he slowly joined them. With the sun finally high, Cook would listen to the day’s recordings and improvise in real time on the instrument that remains the first and most steadfast love of his musical life, the piano. When Cook left that cabin after a year, he moved into a home of his own in Durham, with plenty of space for his two boys to play and for something he’d never actually owned—a proper piano. Over the next several months, Cook spent untold hours drilling down on these pieces. During lessons with the Southern gospel great Chuckey Robinson, the pianist had challenged Cook to sustain fewer notes, to stop clouding and crowding his melodies by using the instrument’s pedals as crutches. His music suddenly had more clarity, with the sounds and the feelings they ferried given more room to function. Cook dug into the danger and delight, into the idea that we twist our bodies into knots trying to understand what is best for our hearts. In April 2024 Cook returned to Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley where he was raised. His lifelong friend and bandmate, Justin Vernon, had just finished an overhaul of April Base, the studio compound where Cook has worked on more than a dozen records during the last 15 years. Cook asked Vernon to produce Appalachia Borealis as simply as possible—merely to listen and offer feedback in two extended afternoon sessions, to talk about the right takes and make sure that they’d captured the heart. It, of course, got more complicated, as they experimented with the process. Vernon would add or subtract the bird songs to Cook’s headphones, seeing how they impacted his playing. Or they would route his notes through a massive reverb chamber, Cook responding in gossamer improvisations. Appalachia Borealis is a deeply poignant and personal set of 11 piano meditations, built with the emotional range of a full and open existence. Inspired by those windowsill improvisations, it reflects not only the turmoil and sadness of a fraught time for Cook but also the hope, light, and joy of looking for the other side. You can sometimes still hear the birds whose tune and time helped to inspire so many of these songs. Even when they’re not within earshot, their essence remains.

Jagjaguwar is proud to release the long lost Julie Doiron album 'Broken Girl', expanded to include her first two 7"s. It was originally released in 1996 by Doiron after her band--the psychedelic folk group Eric's Trip--had crumbled around her, under the temporary moniker "Broken Girl". The name did nothing to hide her feelings regarding the breakup of her band and the relationships that she shared with its members; neither did the songs on the record. The twelve songs from the original album come across like an epitaph for a departed lover. 'Broken Girl' was indeed a new beginning for Doiron, both as a solo artist as well as a record label executive. The first two Broken Girl 7"s (both included on this reissue), as well as the self-titled full-length were released on her own label Sappy Records, a label which went on to release her Juno Award-winning 'Julie Doiron & the Wooden Stars' full-length as well as releases by Moonsocket, Orange Glass, Snailhouse, and Elevator to Hell.

'Broken Girl' was a watershed for Doiron, showing her to be the sort of songwriter and performer that Eric's Trip only hinted at. Achingly beautiful and showcasing her vocal style and personality as a songwriter, the reviews immediately put her in the same class as Leonard Cohen in terms of importance as a Canadian solo artist. The album was self-recorded in the same home-y manner as the classic Eric's Trip albums which helped--along with albums by peers Sebadoh, East River Pipe and Smog--define the bedroom aesthetic of the early '90s. While some rock scribes would call it lo-fi, the fidelity of the recordings that Doiron and her Eric's Trip mates employed in the first half of the '90s was clearly the most appropriate medium. The close-mic'ing of everything from the vocals to the swirling guitars and peaking drums created a sense of real intimacy (while avoiding a lot of the awkward pitfalls that so many confessional songwriters run into) and suburban claustrophobia. It is very easy to see the four-piece as a Nick Drake-like entity who had been raised on the far East Coast of Canada in Moncton, New Brunswick on the SST catalog (Eric's Trip took their name from the Sonic Youth song from Daydream Nation) and whose nucleus was a four-fold of independently-minded co-dependents with no need for a producer or other intermediary to the recording process which might break the spell for even a moment.

Initially released in a scant edition of 1,000, 'Broken Girl' went immediately out of print and has become a highly sought-after collector's piece.

"Fellow Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen once titled an album Songs From A Room. Montreal-based Julie Doiron apparently took up residence there and removed whatever furniture was left behind."--Rob O'Connor, Rolling Stone 

Cut in three days in 1975, Doug Firebaugh’s Performance One captures a young songwriter alone in a Roanoke, Virginia motel room, chasing Nashville dreams through cosmic Americana haze. Self‑written and performed, with only a single pedal steel guest, it first appeared on a small grey‑market label. This Numero Group 50th‑anniversary remaster preserves its faded, wandering beauty.

In "Carrie and Lowell," Sufjan Stevens is a child again or, more specifically, the child character in the family of man drama that often but not always centers on the story of love given, or love forsaken, but isn't that the same thing to the poet? That the love Stevens sings about having left or given or been born to--thank you, Carrie--is a perceptible wound not only on the singer's throat, but his sleeve: he wears love's incomprehensibility, and the deep incomprehensibility of being a son, like a backing vocal on "Carrie and Lowell," which is also filled with colors, hearts, trees, conclusions, and beginnings, all adding up to the kind of intimacy that caught my eye the morning I sat in the diner waiting for the sun to get stronger as I saw intimacy pass by while going about it's business, like something sung and felt by Sufjan Stevens on his new beautiful solitary and rich record filled with faith and disbelief and the resurrection of trust and dreams. - HILTON ALS

Multi-instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens made a couple of records that slipped under the radar before his third, the astoundingly lush post-rock concept album GREETINGS FROM MICHIGAN, gained him critical attention and cult status. Seemingly bent on not repeating himself, Stevens scales down MICHIGAN's grandeur to a minimalist palette for SEVEN SWANS. Where the previous album was instrumentally comparable to Tortoise or Stereolab, SEVEN SWANS is practically lo-fi, based around simply strummed acoustic guitars, banjo, organ, and hushed vocals. It's more akin to laconic Americana troubadours like Will Oldham and Iron & Wine, though no amount of sonic slimming-down can disguise Stevens's knack for crafty arrangements and accessibly quirky songs. Like-minded spirit Daniel Smith of the Danielson Family produced, and other Family members provide accompaniment that's considerably more structured than their own free-wheeling recordings.

»Carpet Of Fallen Leaves« is an introduction to the folk-pop world of Eddie Marcon. It follows in the footsteps of other collections of Japanese artists on Morr Music, such as yumbo, Andersens, and the »Minna Miteru« compilations, »Carpet Of Fallen Leaves« draws together songs from Eddie Marcon’s twenty-two-year history, including fragile, yet rich in melody material, collected from a prodigious run of limited edition, self-released CD-Rs.

Eddie Marcon is the project of Eddie Corman and Jules Marcon, who met through their involvement in Japan’s underground music scene. Eddie was a member of noise-rock duo Coa, while both Eddie and Marcon were part of psych-rock collective LSD-March. Forming in 2001, Eddie Marcon’s sound is markedly different from these groups, though they do, at times, share a sense of psychedelic dislocation, through the gentle, limpid pace of their songs. But with Eddie Marcon, melody and gentleness is at the music’s core.

They’ve long marked out their own, unique territory within a worldwide community of psych-folk and folk-pop artists; sharing their music through a subterranean network of colleagues and friends, they count groups like The Pastels and The Notwist as their fans, and Eddie has collaborated with the likes of Shintaro Sakamoto, and Aki Tsuyuko (in Tondekebana, and with Marcon and Ippei Matsui in the quartet Wasurerogusa). Eddie Marcon have also recently worked with drummer Ikuro Takahashi, who’s played with groups such as Fushitsusha, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and Nagisa Ni Te.

Across the songs on »Carpet Of Fallen Leaves«, Eddie Marcon’s songs are performed by Eddie on guitar, organ and vocals, and Marcon on bass; they’re variously joined by Takahashi, Yojiro Tatekawa (drums), Tomoko Kageyama (vibraphone), Yasuhisa Mizutani (flute), Madoka Asakura (vocals), and Ztom Motoyama (pedal steel). The arrangements are pared back to best serve the core of each song, and the playing is gorgeous – fluent but not showy; capable of great intricacy, but aware that simplicity is key to direct communication.

Songs like »Mayonaka No Ongaku« stretch their limbs languidly, the music shivering with beauty as guitar and cymbal drift across Eddie’s poised vocal delivery. »Tora To Lion« began as an improvisation, but it’s become a firm favourite of the group’s fans: as Eddie says, »it has become a very important song for us, to the extent that it can be said to be our representative song.«

Perhaps the most moving thing about »Carpet Of Fallen Leaves«, though, is the way it captures the subtle yet significant moments of everydayness that ask for our attention. »Shoujo«, a song for a beloved cat who passed away, possesses rare emotional resonance. »At the end of the song,« Eddie remembers, »I wanted to have her throat rumbling endlessly.« When the song was cut, a television voice appeared behind the purring, saying ›thank you‹. »For us, it felt like words from Poco-chan, and tears came to our eyes.«