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GB 106CD
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The follow-up to Chuck Johnson's acclaimed Balsams LP (VDSQ 021LP), The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar. This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider palette of sounds, adding strings and piano, to dive deeper into the sound bath of Johnson's meditative music. The Cinder Grove is a profound, affecting statement on the nature of loss and irreplaceability as well as a major addition to the canon of Johnson's work. It's a suite of requiems for lost places. Many of the spaces that once fostered affordable living and creative work now only exist in sonic memory, like the echoes of ghosts. Like much of the California landscape in recent years, some of these spaces having succumbed to fire. Others, to the equally inexorable forces of gentrification. While his 2017 LP Balsams was intended to provide the listener with a space for respite and calm -- even healing -- The Cinder Grove seeks to remember what has been lost while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit and the natural world. In making The Cinder Grove, Johnson dug through archival recordings from Oakland DIY performance spaces to digitally extract their reverb and echo qualities. He then applied these effects -- as well as the digitally modeled reverberation of a redwood forest -- to the tracks on The Cinder Grove, allowing the pieces to bask in the lush virtual spaces, and in the process realized that these sonic re-constructions can only ever be approximations. We try to make spaces what we want them to be, whether in memory or in the material present. Chuck Johnson - pedal steel guitar, synthesizers, Yamaha electronic organ, treatments with: Sarah Davachi - piano; Marielle V. Jakobsons - violin; Hilary Lewis - viola and violin; Crystal Pascucci - cello.
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VDSQ 027LP
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The follow-up to Chuck Johnson's acclaimed Balsams LP (VDSQ 021LP), The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar. This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider palette of sounds, adding strings and piano, to dive deeper into the sound bath of Johnson's meditative music. The Cinder Grove is a profound, affecting statement on the nature of loss and irreplaceability as well as a major addition to the canon of Johnson's work. It's a suite of requiems for lost places. Many of the spaces that once fostered affordable living and creative work now only exist in sonic memory, like the echoes of ghosts. Like much of the California landscape in recent years, some of these spaces having succumbed to fire. Others, to the equally inexorable forces of gentrification. While his 2017 LP Balsams was intended to provide the listener with a space for respite and calm -- even healing -- The Cinder Grove seeks to remember what has been lost while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit and the natural world. In making The Cinder Grove, Johnson dug through archival recordings from Oakland DIY performance spaces to digitally extract their reverb and echo qualities. He then applied these effects -- as well as the digitally modeled reverberation of a redwood forest -- to the tracks on The Cinder Grove, allowing the pieces to bask in the lush virtual spaces, and in the process realized that these sonic re-constructions can only ever be approximations. We try to make spaces what we want them to be, whether in memory or in the material present.
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GB 076CD
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Glitterbeat's instrumental music imprint tak:til, is undertaking an exciting label partnership with VDSQ Records, the acclaimed US based label specializing in "21st Century Guitar".
Chuck Johnson is a composer and musician residing in Oakland, CA. His 2017 album Balsams ended up on albums-of-the-year lists at Uncut, Pitchfork, and NPR. Tak:til is releasing Balsams for the first time ever on CD -- with two additional tracks. Chuck Johnson's pedal steel guitar debut delivers a group of pieces for ambient meditation. Recorded in a single two-week session during late 2015, and subsequently arranged/constructed/treated in the studio in spring of 2016, Balsams is awash in layers of tonal perfection. The album constantly evolves while maintaining a unified approach across both sides. Balsams is a record that lives outside genre and time, one that continues to develop with each successive deep listen. A unique expansion in the VDSQ catalog, Balsams is an album created in the hopes of providing solace and regenerative energies for many years to come.
"On this expressive and singular new album, Chuck Johnson gives his steel pedal guitar the starring role, and creates a kind of country post-rock. It feels like a universe unto itself." --Pitchfork (8.1)
"Chuck Johnson often writes for solo acoustic guitar, but lately has been stretching his ambient composition skills with the tenderness heard throughout his discography. For Balsams, he layers loops of pedal steel guitar that rest on the edge of dusk, just when the tumult of day subsides and seeps into the soul's reflection." --NPR (Best Music of 2017)
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SCTR 029LP
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"Chuck Johnson's impact on the contemporary guitar world continues to be felt. His first two solo records signaled the arrival of a unique player, steeped in various forms of playing and influence, yet distinctly modern. Johnson eschews a weathered traditionalism for the wide-scope expanse of 21st Century Americana. On his third album, Blood Moon Boulder, Johnson reaches a compositional peak in a nod to the picturesque naturalism of the American landscape. The dynamics of his range can be felt on this singular record, a soundtrack-like listen that rewards the ear with rich detail. His precision and tone recall the heights of Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas on the extended opening track 'Corvid Tactics.' Notably, the guitarist duels with a phantom Chinese radio signal that slips through the silences during the recording session. One can hear the ghostly sounds peek through at moments as Johnson bends his strings. 'Medicine Map' delivers a melodic melancholy, with an every-note-perfectly-placed aesthetic. Rather than ramble or evoke some kind of outdated nostalgia, Johnson lets his cinematic instincts take lead. Perhaps most evocative of this approach is 'Private Violence,' a meditative composition with gorgeous pedal steel played on top of electric six-string, ending in a sustained tonal minimalism that could easily stretch into a whole LP of its own. Blood Moon Boulder contains a lyricism, an exactitude and emotional arc all its own. And that's worth playing again and again." --Steve Lowenthal
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VDSQ 021LP
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2020 repress. Chuck Johnson's pedal steel guitar debut delivers a group of pieces for ambient meditation. Recorded in a single two-week session during late 2015, and subsequently arranged/constructed/treated in the studio in spring of 2016, Balsams is awash in layers of tonal perfection. The album constantly evolves while maintaining a unified approach across both sides. Balsams is a record that lives outside genre and time, one that continues to develop with each successive deep listen. A unique expansion in the VDSQ catalog, Balsams is an album created in the hopes of providing solace and regenerative energies for many years to come.
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