#magic tuber string band

[dustedmagazine]

Under the Radar: Jim Marks' Year-end List for 2023

Samuel Leipold, Jürg Bucher, Lucca Lo Bianco

The stream of great new music is constant and impossible to keep up with. Inevitably, some of it goes largely unnoticed. My year-end list consists of releases that I really enjoyed but didn’t get around to writing about and haven’t seen reviewed elsewhere in English. They are presented in no particular order.

Samuel Leipold, Jürg Bucher, Lucca Lo Bianco — Ostro (Ezz-thetics)

This trio of clarinet, double bass, and guitar delivers atmospheric free jazz. Experimental without being confrontational (included is a choice Jimmy Giuffre cover), Ostro offers a rarely heard sound palette and consistently interesting arrangements.

Luis Ribeiro — A Inven​ç​ã​o da Fic​ç​ã​o (Porta Jazz)

The Porta Jazz label out of Portugal released fewer records than usual this year, perhaps a lagging effect of Covid. One standout is the debut by guitarist and composer Ribeiro, who leads a sextet with tenor and baritone saxophones in the front line. Love the eerie vocalization on the opening track. Space age and swinging.

Adrián Royo Trío — Pangea (Errabal Jazz)

This Spanish release initially caught my eye in the La Habitacion de Jazz blog because of the involvement of double bassist Manel Fortià. Strong original melodies and tight interplay make for a standout piano trio recording in a great year for piano trios.

Javier Burin — Escenarios (Los Años Luz Discos)

Another excellent but low-profile piano trio release this year. The assuredness and inventiveness of Argentinian Burin’s playing are the more remarkable given that he is only in his early twenties; check out especially the unlikely cover of “Tenor Madness.”

Marcus Eads — Pride of Ostego (self-released)

This Minnesotan has been putting out gentle Takoma-style guitar music for more than a decade. Strongly rooted in the rural midwestern landscape, his playing and homespun compositions call to mind back porches, canoe trips, and sitting by the fireside.

Scott Tuma — Nobody’s Music (Haha)

I was thrilled to stumble across this unheralded release recently by the Souled American alumnus and one of the architects of slowcore. Apparently first appearing last year on cassette, Nobody’s Music, coming six years after No Greener Grass, delivers more ambling and spindly acoustic guitar lines that seem to drip out of the instrument with the occasional accompaniment of what sounds like harmonica or accordion. Enchanting as always.

Mohamed Masmoudi — Villes Éternelles (Centre des Musiciens du Monde)

Canadian oud master Masmoudi creates a compelling blend of Arabic music and jazz in a percussion-less quartet also featuring clarinet, piano, and double bass. With top-notch musicianship and catchy tunes, the group shows how good world music fusion can sound.

Jorge Abadias — Camins (Underpool)

The Underpool label documents the lively Barcelona jazz scene. Its 2023 releases include this quartet date led by guitarist Abadias. His original post-bop (in the broad sense) compositions tend toward slower tempos, and fine soloing abounds.

Jakob Dreyer — Songs, Hymns, and Ballads Vol. 2 (self-released)

Another solid post-bop quartet recording featuring original compositions. Three U.S. musicians fill out German double bassist Dreyer’s quartet, and this second volume nicely complements Vol. 1 released last year.

Various Artists — You Better Mind: Southeastern Songs to Stop Cop City (self-released)

This project, spearheaded by the Magic Tuber String Band (who also released the outstanding Tarantism in 2023), brings together a broad swath of musicians, including Joseph Allred, Shane Parish, Sally Anne Morgan, Nathan Bowles, the Tubers themselves, and some I was unfamiliar with. The music tends toward the rustic; much of it is excellent, and the cause is as noble as they come.

Jim Marks

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Magic Tuber String Band - Tarantism

Several years back, I used the term "rusticosmic" in an Aquarium Drunkard review. A quick Google search tells me that this amazing (or amazingly bad) coinage did not catch on. But I'm going to use it again to describe the rusticosmic stylings of the Magic Tuber String Band. On Tarantism, their latest LP for Feeding Tube, MTSB continues to plow the fertile, morel-strewn middle ground between ancient Appalachian folk modes and the "eternal music" of La Monte Young, et al. It's a similar project to what Pelt and their cohorts have been up to for the last few decades — and I love it. Droning fiddle and cello, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, shruti box and more blending together into a deep, absorbing whole. It's magic.

[13melekradyo]

27 Nisan 2024 tarihli program kaydı.

Güncel folk kayıtlarından bir seçki // A selection of recent folk recordings. Download.

01 – Jessica Pratt – Life Is 02 – Faye Webster – eBay Purchase History 03 – Grace Cummings – Without You 04 – Bill MacKay – Keeping In Time 05 – Andy Acquarius – Waters Above, Waters Below 06 – Six Organs Of Admittance – New Year's Song 07 – Jim White and Marissa Anderson – Bitterroot Valley Suite I Water 08 – Black Brunswicker – This Bodily Curse 09 – Magic Tuber String Band – Needlefall 10 – Raoul Eden – Will Never Die (Improvisation) 11 – Kevin Coleman – Mammut Americanum

[auralthicket]

episode 28: clear-eyed wanderers (06.30.21)

set 1:

Cyrus Pireh -- What Are We Doing What Could Be Done? -- Visitor (self-released, 2021)

Rover -- Touch -- California Virus (Musimedia, 1991)

Magic Tuber String Band -- Teo’s Farewell -- When Sorrows Encompass Me ‘Round (Feeding Tube, 2021)

set 2:

Wild Up -- All Changing -- Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine (New Amsterdam, 2021)

Don Cherry -- Untitled Summer House Session 4 -- The Summer House Sessions (Blank Forms Editions, 2021)

Matt Evans -- Arcto 2 -- touchless (Whatever’s Clever, 2021)

Wind❏ws -- Presence [promotional excerpt] -- Shadows & Light (Regional Attraction, 2021)

set 3:

sweetearthflying -- Return to Whatever -- Return to Whatever (Null Zone, 2021)

Jon Hassell -- Brussels -- The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things By the Power of Sound (Intuition, 1987)

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists — Measure, Pour & Mixtape: Music for Cooking (Spinster)

It’s somewhat surprising that an organization that describes itself as a “feminist record label” should make its second mixtape compilation about food and cooking, among the most stereotypical and traditional of female activities. However, as the tape demonstrates, different women have different attitudes about the domestic arts — some warm and comfortable and full of love, others rebelling against the forced servitude that is so often entailed. I myself had a brief period in my mid-20s when I refused to cook out of some sort of inchoate resentment of the patriarchy. I came around when I realized that eating would be a lot more enjoyable, not to mention cheaper, if I learned some of the basics.

In any case, this diverse and lovely collection reclaims the kitchen for artists and thinkers, and significantly, not all of them are women (Avey Tare and Michael Hurley contribute cuts, as well as the mixed gender Magic Tuber String Band). They come primarily from the more adventurous end of folk music that Spinster focuses on, but not entirely. There are Inuit throat singers of PIQSIQ and the improvisatory percussionist Jess Tsang (who incorporates an electric mixer into her track) to break up the picking.

The tracks are so lovely and so much each its own world that it’s to choose favorites, nonetheless Sally Anne Morgan’s luminous “Grain Song,” imbues country fiddle and plucked strings with otherworldly resonance, while Lou Turner’s “Ride the Melting” is characteristically smart, surprising and beautiful. Magic Tuber String Band’s minor key hoedown “Bill Henseley’s Hoppin’ John” is as satisfying as the grain-based sustenance it celebrates, while Little Mazarn’s “Thankgiving,” limns happy memories with melancholy in banjo, bowed saw and plaintive voice.  

The prompt for all the tracks, apparently, was “If you made music the way you cook, what would it sound like?” and poet Crystal Good’s “Food Poem” answers that question with silence. Good doesn’t cook, and her track makes it plain why not, in the blighted relationship between her mother and step-father, where nothing was ever good enough, and the happier pairing of her dad and step-mother, where food defined the woman of the house to the exclusion of everything else. The track is a bit of an outlier in a compilation that generally celebrates cooking and food and family, but a bracing one. Like the handful of bitter greens that makes the soup so good, her anger makes the rest sound all the more inviting. Women and food. It’s complicated.

Jennifer Kelly

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Magic Tuber String Band

Photo by Kristin Karch

The core of the Magic Tuber String Band consists of Courtney Werner on fiddle, Evan Morgan on guitar and banjo and both on occasional vocals and other acoustic instruments. Their approach involves combining traditional Appalachian instrumentation with the experimentalism of composers such as Henry Flynt, Harry Parch, and Pauline Oliveros. Field recordings and drones add texture to many of their tracks, and Werner and Morgan as well as their collaborators are formidable players. The arrangements are complex but not cluttered, with tunes often veering in unexpected directions. In his review for Dusted, Jim Marks described the band’s latest, Needlefall, as “the most satisfying in a five-year run of outstanding albums.”

Evan Morgan

Alan Clarke — Penda's Fen

I found out about this film (made for a BBC anthology series) from Rob Young’s book on British folk, Electric Eden. It is one of those immediately captivating films, almost perfectly made (and visually reminiscent of Tarkovsky's Nostalghia at times). The whole film builds towards a view of folk tradition and local history as an antidote to reactionary nationalism, all within the space of a coming-of-age story. We watched this for the first time recently and coincidentally were just asked to play before a screening of the film in Brattleboro this coming August for Epsilon Spires.

Alice Rohrwacher — La chimera

Alice Rohrwacher is really homing in on a kind of filmmaking that is related to the dialects of those films from the past we now think of as great films — but it is also something entirely her own. It's patient but also immediately spellbinding which feels like a rare quality these days. La chimera picks up the theme of a modern relationship to old ways that points towards communal culture as a way out of an increasingly privatized world. But it is also a lot more than that. It's both an obvious folktale and a dense dream. Would make a great double feature with Penda's Fen.

Mario Vargas Llosa — The War of the End of the World

I was completely blown away by this novel. I found it at a used bookstore last summer and waited until December to pick it up because of its intimidating length. It is an onslaught of character portraits, nearly everyone vividly rendered and memorable despite the book’s length and the pace of events, time rolling back, jumping ahead, and standing still. The story of the War of Canudos, one of a heavily armed state attacking the most disenfranchised members of its land in the name of democracy, makes TWOTEOTW a very timely read.

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band — Dancing on the Edge

Easily my most listened to record of 2023 and still on heavy rotation on into 2024. We got to see Ryan & the Roadhouse Band play this material live in Athens a few weeks ago which was absolutely transcendent.

John Francis Flynn — Look Over the Wall, See the Sky

We have been living in Augusta, GA since December of last year and there’s something about this record that really clicks with the architecture and layout of the city. I go for walks with my dog every day on a trail that runs between the canal and the Savannah river. To the south, the trail leads towards a long-abandoned, late 19th-century textile mill; to the north, past the hidden ruins of an old fish camp squat and the (often) roaring stone headgates. This record builds a sense of place and that place is intended to be Dublin. But its transposable nature hints at a deep connection between certain places that have not entirely lost visible monuments to their past industry and daily life. I especially like the version on here of Ewan MacColl's “Dirty Old Town.”

Courtney Werner

Chaz Knapp and Mariel Roberts — Setting Fire to These Dark Times

Chaz Knapp invited me to improvise with him throughout the Ozarks in 2022 using fiddle, dulcimer, voice, tape loops and natural sounds. I’m inspired by his attention to space and the sound of landscapes. He and cellist Mariel Roberts released this incredible album in 2023.

Tatiana Hargreaves — Soledad

I saw Tatiana perform the Soledad compositions at a residency in Durham, NC in 2018 and it was one of the most influential live music experiences of my life. They blend elements of old-time and contemporary classical styles with extended techniques to create captivating solo fiddle pieces that inspired me to want to compose myself.

Rafael Toral — Spectral Evolution

One of my favorite albums of this year so far.

Zoh Amba — Bhakti

An incredible record full of life and heart.

Evan Parker — Evan Parker with Birds

One of my favorite examples of pushing an instrument to be an animal, and duetting with natural sounds.

[dustedmagazine]

Dusted Mid-Year 2024, Part III (The Lists)

Winged Wheel

Dusted’s writers picked two for the mid-year exchange, but any of them could easily reel off a dozen or more other favorites.  Find out what else they liked in this collection of lists. 

If you haven’t read Part I or Part II yet, check them out. 

Christian Carey

Arooj Aftab —  Night Reign (Verve)

Richard Baker —  The Tyranny of Fun (NMC)

Kyle Bruckman —  Of Rivers (New Focus)

Madi Diaz —  Weird Feeling (Anti)

Julia Holter —  Something in the Room She Moves (Domino)

Hurray for the Riff Raff —  The Past is Still Alive (Nonesuch)

Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey —  Compassion (ECM)

Kali Malone —  All Life Long (Ideologic Organ)

Rosali — Bite Down (Merge)

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion —  Rectangles and Circumstance (Nonesuch)

Ches Smith —  Laugh Ash (Pyroclastic)

Waxahatchee —  Tigers Blood (Anti)

Tim Clarke

DIIV — Frog In Boiling Water (Fantasy)

Loma — How Will I Live Without A Body? (Sub Pop)

Jessica Pratt — Here in the Pitch (City Slang)

Jon Mckiel — Hex (You’ve Changed)

Winged Wheel — Big Hotel (12XU)

Corridor — Mimi (Sub Pop)

English Teacher — This Could Be Texas (Island)

Helado Negro — Phasor (4AD)

Ty Segall — Three Bells (Drag City)

The Smile — Wall of Eyes (XL)

Andrew Forell

Arab Strap — I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍 (Rock Action)

Camera Obscura — Look to the East, Look to the West (Merge)

Daryl Groetsch — Above the Shore (self-released)

Drahla — angeltape (Captured Tracks)

Geotic — The Anchorite (Basement’s Basement)

Iceboy Violet, Nueen — You Said You’d Hold my Hand Through the Fire (Hyperdub)

Kim Gordon — The Collective (Matador)

Mick Harvey — Five Ways to Say Goodbye (Mute)

Sandwell District — Where Next? (Point of Departure)

Umbrellas — Fairweather Friend (Slumberland)

Yosa Peit — Gutbuster (Fire)

Reissues:

Brion Gysin — Junk (WEWANTSOUNDS)

These Immortal Souls — Get Lost (Don’t Lie!) Mute

Bryon Hayes

Rosali – Bite Down (Merge)

Winged Wheel – Big Hotel (12xU)

Gastr Del Sol – We Have Dozens of Titles (Drag City)

Beings – There is a Garden (No Quarter)

Ambarchi Berthling Werliin – Dusted II (Drag City)

Sunburned Hand of the Man – Nimbus (Three Lobed)

Water Damage – In E (12xU)

Dun-Dun Band – Pita Parka Pt. 1: Xam Egdub (Ansible Editions)

Gerycz Powers Rolin – Activator (12xU)

Magic Tuber String Band – Needlefall (Thrill Jockey)

Alex Johnson

Rosali — Bite Down (Merge)

RE Seraphin —  Fool’s Mate (Take A Turn/Safe Suburban Home)

Uranium Club —  Infants Under the Bulb (Static Shock)

The Spatulas —  Beehive Mind (Post Present Medium)

Yohei —  Echo You Know (Perpetual Doom)

Pardoner —  Paranoid in Hell (Convulse)

NYSSA —  Shake Me Where I’m Foolish (Six Shooter)

Nowhere Flower —  Ruts the Place (Radical Documents)

Sheer Mag —  Playing Favorites (Third Man)

Cindy Lee —  Diamond Jubilee (Realistik Studios)

Oren Ambachi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werlin —  Ghosted II (Drag City)

Winged Wheel —  Big Hotel (12XU)

Jennifer Kelly

Rosali—Bite Down (Merge)

Mdou Moctar—Funeral for Justice (Matador)

Mary Timony—Untame the Tiger (Merge)

Myriam Gendron—Mayday (Thrill Jockey)

Lupa Citto—S-T (12XU)

James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg—All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors)

Rail Band—S-T (Mississippi)

Winged Wheel—Big Hotel (12XU)

Six Organs of Admittance—Time is Glass (Drag City)

Split System—Vol. 2 (Goner)

Ian Mathers

The Body & Dis Fig — Orchards of a Futile Heaven (Thrill Jockey)

Broadcast — Spell Blanket: Collected Demos 2006-2009 (Warp)

Cassandra Jenkins — My Light, My Destroyer (Dead Oceans)

Chelsea Wolfe — She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (Loma Vista)

Jessica Moss — For UNRWA (Self released)

Laura Masotto — The Spirit of Things (7K!)

loscil // lawrence english — Chroma (Self released)

Myriam Gendron — Mayday (Feeding Tube/Thrill Jockey)

Polar Inertia — Environment Control (Northern Electronics)

Whitelands — Night-bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day (Sonic Cathedral)

Jim Marks

Ben Allison, Steve Cardenas, and Ted Nash — Tell the Birds I Said Hello: The Music of Herbie Nichols (Sonic Camera)

Mary Halvorson — Cloudward (Nonesuch)

Demian Cabaud — Arbol Adentro (Porta Jazz)

Fabiano do Nascimento and Sam Gendel — The Room (Real World)

Francesco Sensi — In Abstracto (WoW)

James Brandon Lewis Quartet — Transfiguration (Intakt)

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg — All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors)

Juan Pablo Alcazar — Otro Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps (Porta Jazz)

Michele di Toro, Yuri Goloubev, and Hans Mathisen — Trinomics (Calogola)

Tony Moreno Trio — Ballads Volume 1 (Sunnyside)

Patrick Masterson

Cindy Lee — Diamond Jubilee (Realistik)

Chief Keef — Almighty So 2 (43B)

Marika Hackman — Big Sigh (Chrysalis)

Water Damage — In E (12XU)

Oneida — Expensive Air (Joyful Noise)

Winged Wheel — Big Hotel (12XU)

Burial — “Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above" (XL)

Gouge Away — Deep Sage (Deathwish Inc.)

Blues Ambush — Blues Ambush (Radical Documents)

Tei Shi — Valerie (self-released)

Armand Hammer — BLK LBL (self-released)

Donato Dozzy — Magda (Spazio Disponibile)

Bill Meyer

 أحمد  [Ahmed] —Wood Blues (Astral Spirits)

 أحمد  [Ahmed]—Giant Beauty (Fönstret)

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet—Four Guitars Live (Palilalia) 

Itasca—Imitation of War (Paradise of Bachelors) 

Lisa Ullen, Heirloom (Fönstret)

Lumpeks—Polonez (Umlaut) 

Matthew Shipp Trio, New Directions in Jazz Piano Trio (ESP-Disk’)

Olivia Block—The Mountains Pass (Black Truffle)

Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin—Ghosted II (Drag City)

Rafael Toral—Spectral Evolution (Moikai) 

The Handover—The Handover (Sublime Frequencies) 

Tomeka Reid Quartet—3x3 (Cuneiform) 

Jonathan Shaw

Bad Breeding—Contempt (Iron Lung)

Fuera de Sektor—Juegos Prohibidos (La Vida Es un Mus)

Cindy Lee—Diamond Jubilee (Realistik Studios)

SUMAC—The Healer (Thrill Jockey)

Thou—Umbilical (Sacred Bones)

VR Sex—“Hard Copy” (Dais)

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists — Stop MVP: Artists from WV, VA and NC Against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (War Hen)

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, if it’s ever finished, will stretch over more than 300 miles in rural Wester Virginia and Virginia, crossing environmentally sensitive parts of the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains carrying dangerous, polluting loads of fracked gas. The League of Conservation Votes estimates that the pipeline will generate more than 89 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution annually, about as much as 24 average U.S. coal plans or 19 million passenger cars. Building it will require razing forests that have been sequestering carbon for centuries.

It’s a climate catastrophe, and because it runs through an area that is rich in musical history and culture, it has become a focus for artists and activists, including Daniel Bachman, who organized this 40-track compilation in protest of the pipeline. All proceeds from STOP MVP will go to the Appalachian Legal Defense Fund to support protesters resisting the pipeline’s construction.

That is, of course, one compelling reason to buy this set of music, but it is very far from the only one. The music here is exceptionally diverse and almost uniformly excellent. If you look at the cover and envision a steady stream of earnest folk songs, punctuated by some fingerpicking, think again. Certainly that’s represented on these two discs, but so is noise and rock and punk and hip hop and even, at the end, a stirring piece of gospel that will steel you for the cause.

There’s so much music here that it’s hard to get a grip on it all, but let’s hit some highlights. Magic Tuber String Band’s haunted, haunting rendition of “Undone in Sorrow” is both staunchly traditional and absolutely modern in its lament for a natural world gone haywire. Isak Howell, similarly, finds something potent and bracing in minor key picking. Solar Hex straddles baroque classical cello and folk lament, and there are indeed four crows cawing in the background to “Stone Wall with Four Crows.” My favorite discovery in this lengthy, skewed-folk all-star line-up comes from Høly Riot’s “Spirit Riot,” which kicks up a feeling-the-lord-speaking-in-tongues ruckus with its driving, droning ecstasies.

Some of the cuts are literally about the MVP pipeline, like Joshua Vana and Bernadette “BJ” Lark’s full-throated, heart-swelling “To the River,” while others reference the area’s long history of industrial subjugation. “The Dolly Womack Wreck” retells the story of an old-time train wreck, where the engineer was flayed alive by steam from a broken boiler. “The Coal Tattoo,” sung by Bachman’s father, is about his father’s death in a mine explosion. The hip hop/electronic “John Brown” by Appalachian rapper Prolo chronicles generations of poverty and racism in the region.

A lot of well known folk and indie artists have chipped in. There are tracks from Sally Anne Morgan, Ned Oldham, Nathan Bowles, Rosali Middleton (as Edsel Axle). Yasmin Williams and Bachman himself. But the real tribute to Bachman’s taste, restless song-hunting and open-minded-ness comes from the bands you might not be familiar with, the eerie soundscapes of Tallulah Cloos, the beefy country rock of Tucker Riggleman and the Cheap Dates, the unhinged noise of Dog Scream. The mountains and valleys threatened by MVP are rich in plant and animal diversity, but also musical breadth, and this compilation brings them all together for a worthy cause.

Jennifer Kelly

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Magic Tuber String Band - When Sorrows Encompass Me 'Round

Coming to us from Durham, NC, Magic Tuber String Band is a stellar fiddle/guitar duo comprised of Courtney Werner and Evan Morgan. You can slot When Sorrows Encompass Me ‘Round next to fellow acoustic travelers as Pelt, Nathan Bowles and Black Twig Pickers — artists who stake out the middle ground between the rustic and the cosmic. Throughout the tape’s nine tracks, Werner and Morgan are zoned in with one another, whether they’re playing the square-dance-ready “Devil On A Root Monster” or exploring abstract textures and field recordings on “Wood Thrush Song.” A very strong collection! Get it ... 

[auralthicket]

episode 06: some kind of lonesome (01.20.21)

set 1:

Flanger Magazine -- Intuition Triad [bonus track on reissue] (Sophomore Lounge, 2018/Torn Light, 2020)

Tambourinen -- Wollensak -- Wooden Flower (Cardinal Fuzz/Centripetal Force, 2020)

Jasper Lee -- Milk of Air -- Mirror of Wind (Noumenal Loom, 2017)

Robert Wyatt -- A Last Straw -- Rock Bottom (Virgin, 1974)

Sonny [& Linda] Sharrock -- Bialero -- Black Woman (Vortex, 1969)

set 2:

Magic Tuber String Band -- Blind Willie -- n/a (self-released, 2020)

Michael Tanner -- Dulcimer II -- Suite for Psaltery and Dulcimer (Kit, 2016)

Sarah Davachi -- Laurus I -- Laurus (self-released, 2020)

set 3:

“Blue” Gene Tyranny [and Peter Gordon] -- Leading a Double Life -- Trust in Rock (Unseen Worlds, 2019)

Trees -- Sally Free and Easy -- On the Shore (CBS, 1970)