#daniel and the sacred harp

[jt1674]

[levon]

idk why they took off the alternate take tag but im obsessed with the way levon runs through the line really fast like it sounds like he’s making cartoon noises

[danieljreboot]

[jgthirlwell]

playlist 07.28.23

PJ Harvey I Inside the Old Year Dying (Partisan) Squid O Monolith (Warp) Boris and Uniform Bright New Disease (Sacred Bones) Alyssa Piper and Alarm Will Sound Cradle (Cantaloupe) Laura Perrudin Poisons and Antidotes (Volatine) Stuck Freak Frequency (Born Yesterday) King Gizzard Petrodragonic Apocalypse (KGLW) Sebka Chott Nagah Mahdi (Bandcamp) Kara Jackson Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? (September Recordings) Killer Mike Michael (Loma Vista Recordings) Klara Lewis X Nik Cohn Void Full On (Alter) Daniel O’Sulllivan Rosarium (Bandcamp) Kitba Kitba (Ruination) Patrick Higgins Tocsin (Telegraph Harp) Clark Sus Dog (Throttle)

[planetwaving]

daniel and the sacred harp / devil & peter tork edit when .

[fieryphrazes]

Accidentally got wine drunk with my new work friend and if I don’t listen to Daniel and the Sacred Harp right now I will DIE!!!

[chemsexholmes]

sigh.

[confidence270]

183 Greenwich being led at the 24th UK Sacred Harp Convention, held in the Trinity Community Centre in Bristol. This video is from the perspective of the bass section and there will be a few more to come.

Words:

Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I, To mourn and murmur and repine, To see the wicked placed on high, In pride and robes of honour shine.

But, oh, their end, their dreadful end, Their sanctuary taught me so, On slipp’ry rocks I see them stand, And fiery billows roll below.

[landwriter]

So I have this little Oaths playlist going on because I feel the need to immerse myself in it at all times now... You interested in that or even up to share some (more) recommendations? It's leaning heavily on the folksy side, but its all about the lyrics and vibes for me, so anything goes.

I love getting playlists! Caveat that I am admittedly not the best at listening to them straightaway because music is usually - and new music is always - a, like, 100% Do Nothing Else Only Listen To It activity for me. I don't write with music but I do have ~borders moods~ playlist going on spotify for getting into the Oaths vibe lol. here's a small selection of vibes/historical-cultural context:

The Common Riding - Tom and Jimmy Scott

First of May (Jig) - Rob Hobkirk

Medley: Loch Lomond/Farewell to the Creeks - The Corries

The Rolling Hills of the Borders - The McCalmans

The Sailor's Bonnet - The Gloaming

Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair from the album Saltarello

Saryglarlar - Huun-Huur-Tu

Reversing - Takénobu

Theme from Harry's Game (Arr. Lawson)

The Border Widow's Lament - Daniel Kelly

Idumea "And Am I Born To Die?" - Sacred Harp Convention and Choir versions

[dustedmagazine]

Daniel Bachman—Almanac Behind (Three Lobed)

Almanac Behind by Daniel Bachman

Following the release of an EP of traditional guitar music (Lonesome Weary Blues, also on Three Lobed) at the beginning of the year, Daniel Bachman is back with a full-length, blending found sounds and manipulated noise with Takoma-school guitar and banjo playing in the manner of Morning Star (2018) and last year’s Axacan. This time, he delivers a series of relatively brief tracks that nevertheless have beginnings, middles and ends and follow a kind of narrative arc that encourages discussing them in sequence.

The liner notes indicate that the title is both an anagram of the artist’s name and an invocation of his concern about climate change. Accordingly, there is an apparent progression through the elements of air, water and fire followed by an uneasy resolution at the end. Throughout, noise and voices share space with music in ways that are sometimes complementary and at others confrontational. 

The experience begins with a barely perceptible electronic drone to which static and dribbles of treated guitar gradually adhere on a track titled ominously “Barometric Cascade (Signal Collapse).” The effect is immediately disconcerting as the ear and mind struggle to render the sounds more familiar—the static like a cymbal, the liquid guitar tone like an organ, and so on. The track gives way abruptly to a few seconds of field recordings of the AI voice of National Weather Service recordings (which returns at key moments throughout the record) and then abruptly to another track of static that sounds like a helicopter. Like the glitchy image on the cover, the play of noise and signal suggest both the inadequacy of the human response to the forces that drive global heating and human responsibility for unleashing them. 

The calming tones of a banjo on the fourth track feel like a refuge, though one windswept by static and overtaken by the “Supercell” of the next track. The storm, the threat of it, and its aftermath haunt the middle of the record. “Flood Stage,” one of the longer tracks at just over five minutes, builds with a blend of what sounds like electronics, a sruti box or fiddle and/or more treated guitar that swells like the waters about which the disembodied Weather Service bot has warned. 

The context shifts abruptly just over halfway through the record, with water giving way to its opposite in the form of a “Wildfire” sparked by the sound of a match, and “Think Before You Breathe” then hints at what is at stake. “When the Worlds [sic] on Fire” features more disembodied voices and what sounds like a cross between the “This Land is Your Land” and the Carter Family tune “Little Darlin’ Pal of Mine” on slide that grinds to a halt over bells. 

“Daybreak (in the awful silence)” brings more calming banjo, presented bare without the static in a respite from the chaos represented by the field recordings. The track serves as a transition back to the status quo initiated by “Grid Reactivation” and “Five Old Messages” (including the grimly humorous “Did you guys get storms today?”) from which music is absent. The narrative arc resolves in the haunting and grimly lovely closer “Reactivation-Normalization,” on which gentle fingerpicking blends with other warbly, somewhat ominous guitar tones swathed in static that gradually fade together. 

Overall, Almanac Behind is perhaps the most successful of Bachman’s “noise records” (though, in point of fact, his interests in this regard trace back through 2016’s self-titled release to his earliest recordings as Sacred Harp). The use of shorter tracks than the epic-length statements on Axacan and Morning Star gives this album a lighter, or, at least, more user-friendly feel, and the integration of the music into the static, drones and voices feels more organic to the compositions. Bachman continues to create some of the most distinctive and intellectual music in the Takoma school idiom, and the breadth of his vision is well represented by the pair of recordings with which he has begun and ended 2022. The future as he sees it seems murky and frightening but starred with tiny moments of beauty and understanding. 

Jim Marks

Thanks to untogether for pointing out that "The World's On Fire" is, in fact, the name of a Carter Family tune, which is, of course, why it was chosen for this point in the album. The melody resembles that of "Little Darlin Pal of Mine" and was among the many repurposed by Woody Guthrie.

[levon]

LEVONNNNNNN 😭😭😭😭

[bellsofrhymney]

stage fright for the album thing? :)

1. daniel and the sacred harp

2. the rumor

3. sleeping

4. the ws walcott medicine show

5. just another whistle stop

6. all la glory

7. the shape i'm in

8. time to kill

9. strawberry wine

10. stage fright

[nonesuchrecords]

Happy Earth Day! Here's a look at the seed packets Caroline Shaw is hand-printing for Nonesuch Store pre-orders of her upcoming album with So Percussion, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, due June 25, as well as the front and back of the album, with photography by Daniel Kukla and design by Ben Tousley. You can reserve yours here.

The lyrics on the new album, written and performed by Shaw and Sō Percussion, were inspired by their own wide-ranging interests: James Joyce, the Sacred Harp hymnal, a poem by Anne Carson, the Bible’s Book of Ruth, the American roots tune “I’ll Fly Away,” the pop music of ABBA, and more.

[buttons-beads-lace]

Sacred Harp #183, Greenwich

Tune: Daniel Read, 1785

Words: Isaac Watts, 1719

Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I,

To mourn, and murmur, and repine,

To see the wicked placed on high,

In pride and robes of honor shine.

But, oh, their end, their dreadful end,

Thy sanctuary taught me so,

On slipp’ry rocks I see them stand,

And fiery billows roll below.