|
|
|
|
viewing 1 To 3 of 3 items
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
SHR 218LP
|
"Samuel Locke Ward and Jad Fair are two of the most prolific musicians working today. Fair is a founding member of the band Half Japanese, and has released over 200 albums,
including albums with Yo La Tengo, Daniel Johnston, Moe Tucker, Kramer, Teenage Fanclub, The Pastels, R. Stevie Moore, DQE, Tenniscoats, The Tinklers, Naomi Ishimaru, Jason Willett, Mosquito, and Strobe Talbot. Samuel Locke Ward has released over sixty solo albums as well as a myriad of collaborations with Bob Bucko Jr, Miracles Of God, SLW cc Watt (with Mike Watt) and the cult new age noise group Boundless Relaxation (with Joe Jack Talcum and The Bassturd). He is a cartoonist for Little Village magazine and like Jad Fair, his style musically and visually is wholly his own. Pure Candy is the pair's third album together following 2023's Happy Hearts and Destroy All Monsters, both issued by Kill Rock Stars. Pure Candy is an album of love songs and is the feel-good album of the Summer, Winter, Spring and Fall. The music was composed and performed by Ward who's love of pop music and avant stylings offer seventeen unexpected turns over the course of a three-minute song. The vocals and lyrics are by Fair, lyrics overflowing with words of love, joy, happiness, tenderness, hope and inspiration. Uplifting words for a time dearly in need of some upliftings. As with the previous two albums by Fair and Ward, this album was mixed and mastered by Jonathan Hansen and is being co-released on LP by Shrimper Records (who last worked with Fair on his collaborative three cassette box set Wonderful World) and Chicago's Stationary (Hearts) Recordings."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
SHR 209LP
|
LP version. "On Dispeller, Ben Woods's beguiling new album, his intimate experiments in rock paint a vivid portrait. Here, the New Zealand artist leans comfortably into intuition and abstraction. Expansive arrangements are anchored by heavy-lidded prose, while carrying the air of the portside shack it was made in. Dispeller was recorded throughout a year in Woods's hometown, Lyttelton, with Ben Edwards (Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams, Julia Jacklin) at the helm of the mixing console and co-producing. Utterings, footsteps, and the rattles of the room linger beneath the album's dense instrumentation, alluding to the familiar space the songs were captured in. Here, Woods's songs breathe and flourish into their own worlds. 'I found my voice in trying to make atonality croon,' he says. 'With Dispeller it was less about harmony -- the blend was capturing the songs very honestly in the room, and still making each of them to transport you somewhere different.' Even beside Woods's acclaimed debut, PUT (2019), which saw him sharing stages with Aldous Harding, No Age, Julia Jacklin and Steve Gunn, Dispeller enchants. The songs here are stronger, the instrumentation stranger. With chopped and screwed vocal contributions from underground hero Alastair Galbraith, 'Speaking Belt' snaps and pulses with the sordid clatter of a lost Xpressway single. Charlotte Forrester from Womb (Flying Nun) adds their diaphanous voice to 'The Strip And Punishing Type'. On fragile duet 'Wearing Divine', Lucy Hunter (Opposite Sex / Wet Specimen) threatens to steal the limelight, before a full hive of Marlon Williams's honeyed vibrato comes spluttering out of what sounds like a rusted can. Woods's melodies bring to mind Scott Walker's dramatic tunefulness, while his voice holds something of Gordon Gano's waver, pushed through New Zealand vowel mangling. Dispeller's arrangements hit at the subtle, reactive instrumentation of late-era Fugazi, the glowing murk of Grouper, the Antipodean-gothic drudge of Tall Dwarfs, and the mechanical outer crust of Sparklehorse. However, while Woods experiments with the disparate and the disharmonious, it is the open heart which elevates Dispeller. His voice holds the physical and spiritual middle; flirting with, but never succumbing to the splendor and turmoil which surround it."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
SHR 209CD
|
"On Dispeller, Ben Woods's beguiling new album, his intimate experiments in rock paint a vivid portrait. Here, the New Zealand artist leans comfortably into intuition and abstraction. Expansive arrangements are anchored by heavy-lidded prose, while carrying the air of the portside shack it was made in. Dispeller was recorded throughout a year in Woods's hometown, Lyttelton, with Ben Edwards (Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams, Julia Jacklin) at the helm of the mixing console and co-producing. Utterings, footsteps, and the rattles of the room linger beneath the album's dense instrumentation, alluding to the familiar space the songs were captured in. Here, Woods's songs breathe and flourish into their own worlds. 'I found my voice in trying to make atonality croon,' he says. 'With Dispeller it was less about harmony -- the blend was capturing the songs very honestly in the room, and still making each of them to transport you somewhere different.' Even beside Woods's acclaimed debut, PUT (2019), which saw him sharing stages with Aldous Harding, No Age, Julia Jacklin and Steve Gunn, Dispeller enchants. The songs here are stronger, the instrumentation stranger. With chopped and screwed vocal contributions from underground hero Alastair Galbraith, 'Speaking Belt' snaps and pulses with the sordid clatter of a lost Xpressway single. Charlotte Forrester from Womb (Flying Nun) adds their diaphanous voice to 'The Strip And Punishing Type'. On fragile duet 'Wearing Divine', Lucy Hunter (Opposite Sex / Wet Specimen) threatens to steal the limelight, before a full hive of Marlon Williams's honeyed vibrato comes spluttering out of what sounds like a rusted can. Woods's melodies bring to mind Scott Walker's dramatic tunefulness, while his voice holds something of Gordon Gano's waver, pushed through New Zealand vowel mangling. Dispeller's arrangements hit at the subtle, reactive instrumentation of late-era Fugazi, the glowing murk of Grouper, the Antipodean-gothic drudge of Tall Dwarfs, and the mechanical outer crust of Sparklehorse. However, while Woods experiments with the disparate and the disharmonious, it is the open heart which elevates Dispeller. His voice holds the physical and spiritual middle; flirting with, but never succumbing to the splendor and turmoil which surround it."
|
|
|
|