Interview here with Mr Bussard. Maybe nothing real new but I do love this line from the exchange:
Q: Tell me about a record you still regret not picking up?
A: I don’t have any.
Haha! That's fantastic. And that's an obsession, not a hobby.
Best part of the article are the pictures so be sure to check it out
Read it over at Dust & Grooves
Looks like a cool project to keep an eye on.
Chuck Johnson's classical tilt, virtuoso touch and brilliant compositional skills have been unleashed on the solo guitar audience. The 12-string guitar pieces really are the work of a virtuoso. Chuck Johnson’s picking is clean, exact and pure. Certainly the production work is equally to be credited here, some of these pieces I feel as though Johnson is sitting right in front of me coaxing these amazing compositions from wood and wire.
These are pieces to get lost in, relatively short trips to another place. Fortunately Johnson doesn't needlessly extend the pieces to the point where the listener just ends up lost.
"A Slender Thread" is a gorgeous, gorgeous piece that immediately transported me to a sun kissed meadow with shafts of sunlight cutting through the sky. In the middle of the song I checked the title and it made me wonder what wonderful event was just a thread from happening.
Johnson has a real lyrical touch that is displayed in piece after beautiful piece. Johnson manages to play everything perfectly and yet emotionally as well. This is such a strong effort that I actually think the last couple cuts are my favorite. There are so many releases out there that just kind of peter out as the last few songs play. Not this one. This is far and away my album of the year so far.
A very small detail I noticed while browsing his bandcamp page was a tag list that included "ackerman," could that be William Ackerman? I certainly hope so, I love to see Ackerman getting his long overdue proper respect.
The excellent blog Work and Worry interviewed Johnson last summer and I was struck by his very thoughtful and dead-on description of the term "American Primitive."
And he goes on, you really ought to read the interview, very good stuff.
I hope you will head over to Strange Attractors Audio House and buy the LP or CD of this release. And be sure to visit the Bandcamp page for digital sales. And visit anyway as Johnson is offering a free d/l of "What a friend we have in Jesus/Kensington Blues" that is not on this release.
I was sleepily floating down the Sunflower River one day on a hollowed out old banyan log shaped like some ancient, neanderthalesque 12 string guitar...
When...all of a sudden..........
With a glass of wine in hand (and two in my belly!), I swooned under the restless spell of timeless guitar music...a dance of life that rained down upon my naked and bleeding soul from vast cotton candy clouds and turquoise sunshine oceans...notes that tickled my ears...like 50 billion vermillion spiders dancing across my starving synapses...nerve endings craving for the taste of delicacies found in out of the way, abandoned, rusty old diners and dusty, snake infested arroyos...train stations situated just on the outskirts of Valhalla...just a short trek down a sand strewn desert highway...where cacti signposts point the way...where scorpions and vultures welcome you once you arrive...
Thus are the feelings that envelop me each time I listen to Glenn Jones The Wanting 2-LP set...
I loathe to bring in comparisons, although Robbie Basho, William Ackerman, Michael Gulezian and Billy Faier (some pretty heavyweight talents IMHO)...immediately come to mind...and Glenn is right up there with those highly esteemed purveyors of musical wizardry...
I will not bore the reader with a song by song description of this double slab of shimmering vinyl delight...Glenns thoughts and notes regarding his music are all we need...let your ears be the judge...and your heart the jury...
Glenn Jones album THE WANTING on Thrill Jockey Records is a certified winner!
Blind Brand X
Vancouver, BC, Canada,
November 4, 2011
TRACK LISTING
1. Steffen Basho-Junghans - Rolling Thunder Variation II
2. Helena Espvall - Travessa Do Cabral
3. Meg Baird - Moving Up A Ways
4. Glenn Jones - 1337 Shatuck Avenue, Apartment D
5. Arborea - Blue Crystal Fire
6. Cian Nugent - Odour Of Plums
7. Rahim AlHaj - Baghdad Athania
8. Fern Night - Song For The Queen
9. Steffen Basho-Junghans - Rocky Mountain Variations
Vinyl records are very much in vogue again, as much for their sonic quality as for their collectability. To get the best sounding results when pressing a record, you need to consider the physical limitations of the medium before you mix. Here are some tips for maximizing the sound of your record, the first time around. when pressing vinyl, you’ll trade off program length versus audio quality, so begin by determining how much music you want on each side of your record. An LP typically holds less than 30 minutes of music, and the width and spacing of the grooves plays an important role in the sound quality of a vinyl record. Continue at Electronic Musician
Red Planet opens with a short instrumental track of solo guitar, The Fossil Sea, that rather fittingly sets the tone for the whole CD. Subdued, tense, mysterious and teetering on the edge of this world and another.
You can count on Shanti Curran’s instantly recognizable vocals to complete the transition into the other world. Between her vocals and the excellent treatment they get in production, you are gently yet firmly escorted into gauzy ether.
Buck and Shanti will play anything and everything with strings to get the sound and feel that they want. Shanti’s banjo style is minimalistic and restrained no foolish light speed pickin’ here! And a lot of the attraction to this effort for me is the diverse line up of stringed instruments.
Spain is a particularly stand out piece. Helena Espvall’s haunting cello is in perfect synchronicity with the guitar work, precise and yet so achingly human. An absolutely beautiful piece and probably my favorite vocal work by Shanti.
In fact everything on this disc is so well fit together, melded into a musical whole that you dare not play only a select song or rearrange the track list. Please do not put this into shuffle on your player, you might well rend the time and space of our universe!
They aren’t afraid to stray from the plucked song, Red Planet is a soundscape that continues the tension and mystery of the effort as a whole, ideally placed between the vocal efforts that bookend it.
After 51 minutes of being under the Arborea spell you might wonder where you’ve been. It’s a time spent in another world, it feels a bit frightening but irresistible.
An interesting local note for me is that Taylor Mesple is credited with taking part in the engineering of the disc. Mesple’s father owns a local guitar shop and headed the band Wind Machine for many years. Taylor and his brother were members of the band at a very young age when I saw them playing and I was impressed with how good the two were, they had to be in their early teens. Glad to see he’s keeping good company.
This year, Vanguard Records have announced five albums they are reissuing for the day. Each were remastered from the original master tapes, and will be pressed in a limited edition of 1000 copies each. They will be available ONLY at participating stores on this day, and while it’s safe to say that they may be available elsewhere, if you can scoop a copy or two up, do it early:
Skip James-Today! John Hammond-So Many Roads Mississippi John Hurt-The Immortal John Fahey-Requia (and Other Compositions for Guitar Solo) Country Joe & the Fish-Electric Music for the Mind and Body
On the subject of records... Here's an interesting article on a band that mixed their music to vinyl and back to digital to try to emulate the vinyl sound. Also a few very interesting words on how the quality of the music changes as the needle moves toward the center of the record. Very interesting, but short post, though there are numerous links to other articles.
