Quite different to A Wonder Working Stone and Spoils, the ten songs here are ‘sparse, intimate and concise. The focus throughout is on Alasdair’s deft acoustic fingerstyle guitar and his voice. The songs are variously elliptical and gnomic, direct and personal, romantic and tender.’ With sparing, decisive contributions on clarinet and tin whistle — and from Crying Lion.
A treat for those of us who like their Alasdair Roberts straight-up and hardcore. A pointed, deep selection of mainly Scottish folk songs, recorded live in the studio; beautifully sung, with minimal, exquisite accompaniment by acoustic guitar, or sometimes piano. Sexual oppression, Scottishness, political resistance; stray cows, mystical horses, waterbird royalty. Stiff shots of rapture, fighting talk, heartbreak, and tragedy. Terrific.
‘The first thing is how unhinged it all sounds. The album brews and boils with an ominously dark tone in a desolate space, dense with energy, guitar overdriven past the point of sanity, slamming drum accents, vocals cutting through in what seems to be comprised of another, as yet unheard, language. Yet, inside the apparent wild abandon and destruction is a strict internal logic of construction that unveils itself upon listening…’ With Noel Von Harmonson from Comets On Fire on drums, and Rob Fisk from Badgerlore sharing the bass-playing with San Francisco psych legend Charlie Saufley.
Respite from his recent firestorms, this conjures from spellbinding acoustics and drones galore something meditative and darkly unsettling by turns. Fine vocals and shredding axe work from Elisa Ambrogio.
‘Recorded at home in 2012, early acoustic guitar improv performances from the Bhutanese expat, who’d come to Asheville, NC to study in 2000 and discovered worlds of anarcho-punk and avant garde such as he’d only dreamed. Having made recordings of his newly-located improvisational conception, he intuited a desire to go deeper in his explorations of the recorded sound of the guitar, melding and colliding traditional music with his feeling for the range of textures within.’
Too experimental for their label International Artists, back in 1967.
The 1984 Hollywood novel, captivatingly read by Will Oldham. (Wurlitzer wrote the Two-Lane Blacktop screenplay for Monte Hellman, and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid for Peckinpah, amongst other illustrious works.)