#ryley walker | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sinceileftyoublog · 6 months ago

Text

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly Interview: Knowledge and Dignity

Photo by GUMO

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When I log on Zoom to interview creative and life partners Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly, I expect to see them together. Instead, Ferragutti's at their home in Amsterdam, and Rosaly's camera is set up somewhere outside, but he's not there at all. (The Zoom active speaker view keeps on highlighting him because birds are chirping.) As I introduce myself to Ferragutti, Rosaly eventually shows up, and they explain to me that he's at a house in the forest they share with friends. The contrast between the two locations--personal and internal, earthbound and communal--fittingly mirrors the dichotomy of what I'm there to ask them about, the stunning MESTIZX (International Anthem/Nonesuch). Ferragutti and Rosaly's new album represents the first time either artist publicly confronted aspects of their Latin heritage. It's also their first record at all. Even Rosaly, the prolific experimental music drummer who has played with everyone from indie rock lore like Thurston Moore and Ryley Walker to jazz stalwarts such as Dave Rempis and Matana Roberts, has never made anything that sounds quite like MESTIZX, and only ¡Todos de Pie!, his project exploring the music of Puerto Rico through improvisation, came close to touching the record's layered themes. Nonetheless, Ferragutti and Rosaly have managed to dive deep into complexities while finding a collaborative artistic voice.

The word "mestizx" is a non-gendered word of "mestizo" or "mestiza", the Spanish colonial term for mixed race, an identity the duo owns and turns upside down with MESTIZX. Ferragutti was born in Bolivia and is of Bolivian and Brazilian heritage, countries colonized by Spain and Portugal, respectively. The majority of the modern Bolivian population identifies as "mestizo," a mix of Indigenous and European heritage, of the colonizer and the colonized. It's this in-betweenness that Ferragutti wished to dissect on MESTIZX, a feeling beyond simply growing up with the music of the Bolivian and Brazilian diaspora. Rosaly, meanwhile, is of Puerto Rican heritage but wasn't allowed to speak Spanish outside of his home during childhood, as his parents wished to assimilate him as much as possible to the English-speaking United States. Before he became the dynamic, noisy drummer he was today, he fell in love with percussion and first connected with his roots when watching another drummer of Puerto Rican heritage perform, the late, great Tito Puente. The sounds on MESTIZX touch on all of these musical traditions and more, intensely reflective.

Photo by GUMO

Yet, Ferragutti and Rosaly's approach is also immaculately researched and respectful. Both artists went to school for music; though the songs on MESTIZX are anything but traditional, they reflect Ferragutti and Rosaly's deliberately academic exploration of music-making. They took the time to understand the ritualistic and cosmological context of each included instrument and rhythm before connecting it with modern-day ideas of decolonization and protest via Ferragutti's lyrics. That is, whether it's the impossibly wide array of percussion instruments from all over the world or Ferragutti's synthesizers effected to sound like pan flutes, everything on MESTIZX is included for a reason. "I didn't go thinking on this record, 'I want to use African instruments.'" Rosaly said. "When we were first starting to play around with instruments in the living room and hanging out, the mbira was around, and I came up with this little harmonic sequence, and things started landing on top of that instrument. I had to ask myself, 'I love the sound, of course, but am I using it for reasons that are dignified for the instrument and its lineage without appropriating?" Rosaly studied the way in which the African diaspora was embedded in Puerto Rico. "That musical and spiritual ideology traveled," he said. "Suddenly, the mbira had a place for me."

As much as MESTIZX sounds on paper like an ethnomusicologist's favorite new album--just take a look at the album's immersive liner notes--Ferragutti and Rosaly emphasized to me that the actual qualities of the songs are exemplary of the two's past musical influences and contemporary artistic community. Rosaly's history in the Chicago post-rock and jazz scene shines through, making a song like the album's title track, full of wiry guitars, an orchestra of synthesizers, and Ferragutti's captivating vocals, earn its pitched-to-me would-be-ridiculous descriptor of "Elza Soares fronting Hail To The Thief-era Radiohead." Moreover, on each song, the two solicited contributions from a who's who of contemporary experimental musicians, from bassist Matt Lux and cornetist Ben LaMar Gay to guitarist Bill MacKay and multi-instrumentalist Rob Frye. It's a testament to the collective's creativity how natural, often groovy, and cohesive the songs sound, despite each's long list of players, many of whom play multiple instruments per tune. On lead single "DESTEJER", Ferragutti differentiates between being intertwined with her roots and being suffocated by them, singing, translated from Spanish, "The present conjures the past that informs the future / I dodge the trap / I am not raw material." Her words form a push-pull with the clattering percussion, courtesy of Rosaly and Mikel Patrick Avery's tambourine and caxixi, and the woodwinds that alternate between flutters and smooth expressions, demonstrating the tension within.

Ultimately, the next step for Ferragutti and Rosaly is where the songs on MESTIZX go from here. Right now, they're exploring them in a live setting, on tour in Europe with Lux, Gay, multi-instrumentalist Ben Boye, and pianist Marta Warelis. Before embarking on tour, the two rehearsed simplified versions of the songs themselves, but just like the record, the songs will become fully fleshed only when the duo invites their friends on stage to help them along the way, participating in the modern-day ritual of playing music, a full circle return to the rituals Ferraguti and Rosaly studied to prepare to make the album. "The medium of the record is one thing, and songs need to be certain lengths for them to stay buoyant," Rosaly said. "Having a whole family of magical people we can tour with in different contexts, the music is going to open up in very unforeseen ways."

Below, read my conversation with Ferragutti and Rosaly, edited for length and clarity. We talk about MESTIZX, the album's art and videos, roots, colonialism, and Chicago post-rock.

Since I Left You: Reading about the ideas and story behind MESTIZX, it's clear the issues of identity it deals with are things the two of you have been grappling with for a long time. Why was right now the time you decided to sit down and make this album?

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti: In my case, it's been something I've been dealing with my whole life. I've felt a super loud presence of my roots and realized not everybody where I come from had that. It was almost a burden, a curse. [laughs] But also totally not and really beautiful. It had a big influence in a good way and sometimes in not such a nice way, to the point I had to do something with it. I didn't know exactly what ["it"] was, so I let it go, but the moment I really faced ["it"] through music, I allowed for a lot of healing in terms of my relationship to my roots, the painful parts of my roots, and the beautiful parts of my roots. I also [have] a lot of connection with people, rhythms, and the pain of what it is to come from places so deeply colonized.

I just read an article that somebody wrote in Germany [about MESTIZX], and they called it a bit of a self-help record. [laughs] I don't know, I think it's more than that for me. It's not just about me. It's about something we share as a collective intelligence, where we're at in this moment, in the South American diaspora.

Frank Rosaly: [Self-help] sounds like a bit of a simplification of the context of the record. I started thinking about this stuff around 2006. I had a pretty disconnected relationship with Puerto Rico, by design. My parents kept me as integrated as possible to my benefit. I don't necessarily identify as being Puerto Rican outright. When Ibelisse and I met and began our partnership, being in partnership with a Latina really opened a dialog that was never really so open in my life. That's when things really shifted into high gear in dealing with some of the themes you hear about on this record.

SILY: What about during the process of writing or recording or playing with others? Did your relationship to your roots change?

FR: For me, it deepened things. Since Ibelisse is the guardian of the lyrics, and I'm oversimplifying things here, but I'm creating content from the musical side of things--we're both doing that of course--the rhythms that come from certain regions and all of my research, studies, and interest in that material had a place. Before that, playing with Ryley Walker, it didn't make sense to throw some bomba in there. All of a sudden, this incredible amount of something from within became dislodged and able to move through me and the music, that I hadn't given a lot of space for. I've only been in one project that I created myself, ¡Todos de Pie!, that began to talk about this and research this a bit. This project really set it all free, and it became a waterfall.

IGF: For me, I think it was a really beautiful and intense process, to confront my own biases. I studied classical piano, have done a lot of punk music, and realized in my education, by default, even growing up in South America, I wasn't in contact with the music of the territory, with the real roots. The process of this music was so deep that I started talking with a lot of people and doing a lot of research about how much by design you are already given this very Western idea of listening to, making, and belonging to music. I felt so sad that in my country, we never had enough power to appreciate what we already had there. It's stunning, the most beautiful drum music I've ever heard. It sounds self-helpy, but it's not: It was a big healing process of reconnecting with deeper layers of instruments that belong to a territory. Pan flute, I just see it in the main squares, people playing it in the street, but it's actually a very powerful instrument when put in its right context for its right ritual and purpose. For me, it was a really big journey to go really deep and really dare to listen to things I couldn't listen to before. Even if I don't use the pan flutes, to have a reverence for where my ancestors come from and have a space to listen. The magic embedded in those rituals is out of this world. It's like they're people from the stars. I can't explain the whole thing--it's like a whole book--but I was so stunned by the cosmologies of the people from those territories. This record brought me there, and I'm very, very thankful for that.

SILY: Your average music listener might not think about the fact that an instrument, rhythm, or sound can have its own proper sociohistorical context independent of the sheer quality of how it sounds. Were you hoping to further educate listeners with this record?

FR: I wouldn't go as far as to say "educate." At the end of "BARRO", there's panderetas being played, and it's not some sort of reference or a shoutout, as in, "Here's a little Puerto Rican tidbit." It really has a place in the song because of what the song is talking about and what we're trying to invoke. I found it imperative; there's an urgency for that to happen. When we started making the record, we weren't trying to make a Latin-feeling record--we both tend to make pretty noisy, experimental stuff--but because of the content of the record and what's really happening inside of the music, it informed us to make a different decision as to how the music can be carried by song, flow from song to song, to make a record and an entire story. I've never thought this deeply about all the connective tissue and the meaning of everything on this record. Nothing is put in place, like, "A shaker would be nice!" A shaker is there because it really needs to be there, not just on a musical level, but because of the message.

IGF: I feel like I am a bit more educated; I'm going to start by educating myself. I can communicate to other people. I don't feel like I'm allowed to play a pan flute or anything like that. I know much more now than what I knew before, but that knowledge and dignity I felt making the record is embedded in the music by default, by the way I talk about things, choose this word or that sound. It has to do with a repercussion of understanding the dignity of those instruments in the territories they are made and played: agricultural reasons, cosmological reasons. That knowledge is so inspiring, it helped me decide how to make this record. The record is a reflection of what I learned.

SILY: What determined what language each song was in?

IGF: I think it had to do with the sound. We built "MESTIZX" like a singer-songwriter [song,] and it just came out in Spanish, naturally. Some songs started from the lyrics towards the instrument, others from the drums towards words. At a certain point--and with the help of Frank--I was listening so openly, the song would tell you what language it needed to be sung in. “SABER DO MAR”, the second song of side B, is often translated in the reviews as "Know the Sea", but it's actually "The Knowledge of the Sea". I was thinking that all of these people came from the Africas to Brazil and informed so much music and brought their instruments, gods, and belief systems. I was really inspired by the language carried in that diaspora between Africa and Brazil, which is the colonizer language, which is Portuguese. The sea brought all of these languages to Brazil, and to Bolivia. The last two [songs] in English...I think it has something to do with this "mestizx" thing. I communicate nowadays in English rather than in Spanish or Portuguese. I didn't grow up with it, but I use it so much it's embedded in how I think, how I feel, how I communicate with my love, Frankie. We just communicate in English. Frankie doesn't understand Spanish or Portuguese, so English is our bridge. English is a powerful medium for this record, in terms of all of the voices that live within us.

Photo by Saskia Ludden

SILY: Frank, in terms of music where you come from, how would you say Chicago post-rock informed this record?

FR: I would argue that the fabric of how I think about playing is woven almost strictly from my experiences in Chicago and the music that brought me there in the first place, which dislodged me from a weird path of institutional jazz learning and going to school. I heard Sam Prekop's first solo record with Chad Taylor and Joshua Abrams, then I heard Isotope 217, then Tortoise. I was in Arizona at the time, then I moved to L.A. for a while. I was really in a bubble before that. Suddenly, everything changed because of that sound. It's not any particular artist. They've all influenced me in so many ways. Not necessarily, "I'm going to play like Dan Bitney now because I love that sound," but the principal of how Dan Bitney fits in Tortoise, and how John Herndon sounds in Isotope, and the melodies that Rob Mazurek makes. [Mazurek] plays a lot of intervals in 4ths, which I fell in love with when I was in college composing, but then I was exposed to it in a new context which made me crazy. You hear 4ths everywhere in this record, which is because of Charles Ives by way of Rob Mazurek by way of Gastr del Sol and the free jazz and improvisational lineage from Chicago, from the Art Ensemble of Chicago to what's happening even now. It's all in there.

SILY: From a broad perspective, there seems to be a contrast in textures and moods in every song. Was that a goal, to have tactile instrumentation going on at the same time as something broad and expansive?

IGF: From my point of view, I don't know if it was a strategy as much as my listening inside the moment, which is of course a strategy. [laughs] For me, playing with synthesizers is a really nice way to speculate folkloric instruments. I would tune the synthesizer in different ways to make it have the same tuning as a pan flute. The electricity of the synthesizer had to be there because it's a medium that makes a lot of sense to tie the ancestral with the futuristic, to break through space and time. I was also thinking about whether I should sing or use words because [that way is] less post-rocky--I'm also super inspired by post-rock [laughs]--there was something bigger happening in terms of the palette of the sounds. My voice became a kind of instrument, so to say.

FR: I would argue another part of how I think about things has so much to do with that old version of myself when I was in school, learning about classical percussion and the percussion family. It's such an incredibly huge family of instruments that span across the world. They're all a part of my life, because I've studied them and they mean something to me. If I [use] a pandeiro from Brazil, it's not necessarily just because Ibelisse is speaking in Portuguese, or because it has anything to do with Brazil, but because it's the right sound.

SILY: Did you have specific people in mind you wanted to play on certain songs on the record?

FR: The first person we were thinking about was Matt Lux, because of his sound. I had worked with him on another project where he was the producer. The way he thinks about sound and very gently produces--he just says a few things and lets it sink in--he has a way of being very subtle about helping artists like Ibelisse and I move deeper into the music. We just wanted him around and then said, "Dude, you gotta bring your bass and play a little bit." He had always joked about being in retirement. Luckily, that's not the case. The last time I was in Chicago, I was supposed to do a recording session with Rob Frye and Ben LaMar Gay, and I got really ill. I really love their sound, [so I asked them]. Bill MacKay, I love that guy so much, he's been such a huge inspiration as a human being, let alone a musician, so we wanted to see whether he could arrive and play a few notes.

IGF: We also had some songs with guitar and thought his sound was really unbelievable. Avreeayl Ra is really amazing. Mikel Patrick Avery. There are so many.

SILY: Bill got to play requinto on "SABER DO MAR". I don't think I've heard him play that instrument on record since his album with Ryley Walker years ago.

FR: It's a beautiful sound. He really understood the depth of the music. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese really well.

IGF: We were at Into the Great Wide Open with Ryley, and Bill was there, and he started talking to me in Spanish and Portuguese!

FR: I would be remiss not to mention Chris Doyle, who lives in Amsterdam. He used to be in Antibalas and was in the scene in New York City, roommates with Jaimie Branch for a long time. We are dear friends and play in a few different projects together. He swooped in at the last minute and added some layers that only he could manage, because he's such an incredible musician and really subtle thinker. I would argue he's a producer in the way he added the tiniest touches of beauty that opened things up a little bit more, gave them more air, even though he was adding layers. Mikel Patrick Avery was visiting Amsterdam, and I just asked him to do a couple overdubs because of his feel and sound. He'll just take a toy tambourine and do something smooth as butter, even though that sounds corny.

IGF: There was a community aspect. [Avery] came to visit when we were at International Anthem, and we said, "Don't you want to play some congas or something?" [laughs] It worked out super well. The community aspect is similar to [that] where I come from.

FR: These are all people we're deeply in love with. We wanted that to be embedded in the music, that it's really coming from a place of love and sharing ideas together from a loving place.

SILY: Can you tell me about the history of the voice memo included on "BLESS THEE MUNDANE"?

IGF: Viktor [Le Givens]. [laughs]

RF: I didn't know him very well when I lived in Chicago, but there was a series that I ran at the Skylark in Pilsen for about 8 years with Nick Mazzarella and Anton Hatwich. It originally started with me and Jaimie Branch, but then she moved away. Viktor would come to some shows occasionally. I think he was going to Columbia at the time. He's been this character that orbits my consciousness often. Suddenly, I hear that Ibelisse is this festival in The Hague, and she sees this magical guy doing this thing with Angel Bat Dawid. I was like, "I know this guy!" I started following him on Instagram. This work he does is incredible. It's this beautiful archive of The Great Migration. It's stunning, the way he talks and thinks and presents. I kind of have a little bit of a man crush on him. I started sending him messages about his posts and watching his live feeds religiously for a while. We started exchanging voice messages, and I was telling him while Ibelisse and I were in the midst of making a record, we were busy with really small minor details, really mundane stuff, and he sent this message. It was like, "Uhh...right. Only Viktor could [take] something I was really struggling with and give it life and context." It was super inspiring for me, so I asked him if it was okay to use the voice memo for that conversation.

SILY: How involved were you in the visual identity of the record?

FR: The record cover, I kind of designed it.

IGF: [laughs]

FR: I didn't take the photo or anything like that, but I used Pages to design the [linework.] That came together pretty quickly based on something I drew up.

IGF: We were in Bolivia when we did [the album photos.] We wanted to have a couple amazing friends, photographers and visual artists--and I really wanted to have South American artists--involved in the images. A friend of mine took the pictures, and we went to a very beautiful mountain where I grew up, and to the market, these very crazy places in Bolivia. We did make a mood-board to guide our friend of how it could be, more or less. Not in all of the pictures, but in the cover picture, he really captured something we were longing for. It's full of the world around you, the territories that were talking to us so loudly. For the [video] for "DESTEJER", I asked someone in Bolivia who I didn't know but who I had been following for a while, [Espectador Domesticado]. The concept behind the concept, in Cochabamba, the lake, was, "How does the new generation perceive this music?" We talk all the time about ancestors and the past, but I also want to think about the future. These are ancestors of the future, 23 years old. So we did develop a little bit together, but I gave [the director] a lot of freedom to interpret the territory the way he wanted. We did help him with edits, but I left as much space as possible for his voice.

FR: For "TURBULÊNCIA", we were thinking, "We need to put out another single. Should we make a video? Should we?" Ibelisse and I are part of a collective called Molk Factory, and one of our collective members who is a wonderful video artist who works with projection and light, we asked her whether she wanted to make a video with us real quick. We added some ideas between all of us and came up with the idea of using very open space with movers and dancers. We wanted to deal with the dissonance of what the song is talking about. We wanted to tear apart or unweave, if I can use that word--

IGF: Destejer. [laughs]

FR: Destejer. We very quickly put the task at hand. "Let's mix this video." We filmed it in about 10-12 hours with the help of Marc Riordan, who used to live in Chicago. Incredible drummer, incredible pianist, and now he's really busy with a film living in L.A. He was visiting to play some shows with me and was the main camera operator, which is such a blessing because he's really good at thinking about cameras and how all of that works, because I have no idea. Within a 24-hour period of actual time, that video was formed. It was playful, immediate. We didn't think about too hard. It just came out. We were really happy with it.

IGF: The tricky part is it had digital post-production. When does digital [manipulation] become a response to what we were saying, not just a trick, but serve something more than a trick or a gimmick? It was a bit of a conversation with [director] Noralie [van den Eijnde], because it's called "TURBULÊNCIA", or "turbulence," with things out of control sometimes. How do we listen, and how do we use our hands to carve a new knowing together? Who is giving me the voice, and is that why the hands are moving my face? Is that the ancestors? This counterpoint between who is moving who: Is something moving the body, or is the body open enough to be losing its shape?

SILY: It's the colonizer versus the colonized, external forces affecting our perspective of things versus something more internal.

IGF: I think you're right. At some point, it's taking ownership of these two forces--the duality--and what do you do with it after just being the victim of it. "DESTEJER" was the opposite. We perform, we read the music, and there was this amazing rhythm happening, but we're just looking at the water really quietly. We were totally ADHD and wanting things to happen, but the filmmaker was like, "No! Everything is already happening in the forest, in the lake, in the water." We just had to listen and be there. Both videos are totally different, but in a way, they're totally similar in the essence of making yourself available and take ownership of the things that live within you while dealing with them and their contradictions.

Tour dates:

5/30: de Doelen, Rotterdam, NL

5/31: Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, NL

6/1: C.A.L.L. F.E.S.T.I.V.A.L., Amsterdam, NL*

6/3: Kampnagel, Hamburg, DE

6/4: 90mil, Berlin, DE

6/6: Stadtgarten, Köln, DE

6/7: Church of Sound, London, UK

6/8: Pabfest, Île de Batz, FR

*Members of the MESTIZX band perform

youtube

0 notes

soreheadinamblemood · 1 year ago

Text

youtube

#ryley walker #a lenticular slap

1 note · View note

rastronomicals · 1 year ago

Photo

12:48 PM EDT September 18, 2023:

Ryley Walker - "4th Time Around" From the compilation album Mojo presents Blonde on Blonde Revisited (May 2016)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Compilation given away by Mojo magazine with its July 2016 issue, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Dylan classic

#Ryley Walker #Mojo presents Blonde on Blonde Revisited #4th Time Around

0 notes

krispyweiss · 2 years ago

Text

Album Review: Ryley Walker - Live in Cork Ireland 2015

Ryley Walker was still a folkie when he traveled to Cork, Ireland, for a 2015 solo-acoustic gig.

And he drew a small but enthusiastic audience to hear him deliver songs from Primrose Green (the title track, “Summer Dress”) while previewing Golden Sings that Have Been Sung with “Sullen Mind” and “Funny Thing She Said” as documented on Live in Cork Ireland 2015. Being hugely influenced by Van Morrison at this point, Walker also performed “Fair Play” and encored with a terrific, almost joyful rendering of the traditional “Cocaine Blues.”

Accentuating his fluid guitar playing with screams and falsetto quavers, Walker is feeling it on this nearly decade-old momento and Bandcamp exclusive. And while he’s moved far, far away from the kind of music presented on Live in Cork, with eight tracks spanning just over 45 minutes, the archival album represents early Walker quite well.

Grade card: Ryley Walker - Live in Cork Ireland 2015 - B+

#Bandcamp #ryley walker #2023 albums #live in cork ireland 2015 #van morrison

0 notes

dustedmagazine · 2 years ago

Text

Listed: Davide Cedolin

Davide Cedolin is a Ligurian based artist, mostly focused nowadays on guitar-oriented music, writing and painting. His latest cassette on the Island House label collects seven serene and unruffled meditations, mostly in finger picked acoustic guitar, but augmented sometimes with threads of bowed bass, lap steel and harmonica. In her review, Jennifer Kelly wrote that these compositions “open out into a kind of wide-horizoned dreaminess, an infinity pool of sound that stretches as far as you can see. Here Cedolin lists some guitar music that inspires him.

I wrote something about albums that somehow “clicked me” because of their great guitar works. Hope you’ll enjoy!

Sonic Youth — A Thousand Leaves (Geffen, 1998)

youtube

Maybe I could pick other albums from Sonic Youth, but this is the first one I discovered in real time when I was sixteen, bought on vinyl in a great record store named Distorsioni in Varazze (the town I’ve grown up in) that is closed now. I love this album from them for the natural blend of poppy refrains and very noisy rock elements, the mood, the track list. In my opinion it’s the most textured and rich record from SY, very open and experimental in its own way. And the first of the four times I’ve seen Sonic Youth live, it was in the period of A Thousand Leaves, so I feel very sensitive with this record. One track? “Sunday.” In general, it’s thanks to Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore that I heard for the first time about alternative tunings.

Pelt — Ayahuasca (VHF, 2001)

youtube

I took some time to “digest” the depth and the density of this one. It’s the record that introduced to me (in a very funny way, ha ha) to old time music and somehow to a different way to intend acoustic music and so guitar. I’ve also been captured by the contemplative and psychedelic aura of the whole album that later switched me on drone music as well. There’s not that much about Pelt live on YouTube from those years, but I’ve found an intense video that is really immersive. With Jack Rose, who already implemented the sound of the band with a more prominent acoustic guitar work, the transition from an electric-noise-drone skin to a new acoustic-mantra-folk structured one was completed. I’m still impressed about how borders in music are so vague and relative if there’s a real consciousness of what you are doing. And Pelt’s transition is the perfect case of the natural and organic evolution of a sound.

Grateful Dead — Workingman’s Dead (Warner, 1970)

youtube

In Europe the Dead didn’t have the same wide cultural echo as in North America. Everyone here knows The Doors, Bob Dylan or Neil Young but not as many people as in the States know the Grateful Dead. I heard of Workingman’s Dead at the end of the nineties but it took until my mid-twenties before I got interested in old records. I fell in love with the warm sound of this album, which actually has one of the most brilliant track lists ever to me. Each song is an amazing hit. There’s great guitar work all over the record from both Weir and Garcia, and it’s easy to understand why the sound of this album (and with the extension on the next, American Beauty,) has been intended to be the Americana sound by several music critics and producers. The way all the traditional country, blues and folk elements melt together is so natural and the way the guitars talk to each other is masterful. Also, I’m a huge fan of Jerry on pedal steel and in this record, there are a few of the best moments in his entire career playing that.

John Fahey — Blind Joe Death (Takoma, 1959)

youtube

I had a very nice chat with Jeff Tobias a few days ago inspired by a meme about American Primitive Guitar that at some point was ironically counterposing John Fahey lovers and haters. I totally see there’s this polarization about him, and I kind of get it. I did read How Bluegrass Destroyed My Life, watched interviews, and in my perception, his persona was seemingly contradictory and questionable on several aspects. But the guitar work itself, unquestionably, places him in a very relevant position if we think on what he triggered and how damn good he was. This album is the one I love the most and the one with which I've discovered him. I wouldn't consider Fahey as a direct and conscious influence for me but his taste for melodies and his tricks buzz in my head since the first time I heard them. Particularly “St. Louis Blues.”

Jack Rose — Kensington Blues (VHF, 2005)

youtube

Frankly, I didn’t listened to this album immediately. It took a couple of years before I knew of it thanks to a great musician from Genova and close fellow Paolo Tortora. It was some winter evening at his place, and I remember we listened to the entire record in silence, sipping rum. It warmed my intimate part, kind of healed me. And it wasn’t the rum, it was the way Jack Rose was able to convert remote feelings into some wild stream of consciousness, that to me still is, without forgoing the obvious technical skills, the best part of his playing. The way he was heartly connecting with the instrument and how he was truly one with the instrument. In this video of “Cross the North Fork,” you can see what I’m talking about.

Ryley Walker — Primerose Green (Tompkins Square, 2015)

youtube

Ryley is a terrific guitar player with a terrific voice. He’s simply perfect; when he plays and sings he has a unique voice. I love the sensitivity of his playing, his anarcho-prog-impro wilderness and his accuracy for harmonies and arrangements. This album is perhaps less eclectic compared to the recent ones but it has some of my prefered tracks from him, including this one.

Elizabeth Cotten — Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar (Folkways Records, 1958)

youtube

Same friend, another great suggestion. Paolo introduced me to Libba by sending this video link for “Freight Train,” probably around 2009. I was touched by her uniqueness. She basically built her own grammar to express her own language with such a graceful manner. This album is the first I bought by her on Discogs a few years ago, and its pure magic all over the length. I could spin this record on loop for days without either changing the side, whichever it is.

Hobart Smith — In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes (Smithsonian Folkways, 2005)

youtube

I was exploring YouTube videos of Elizabeth Cotten and I came across “Railroad Bill” with Hobart Smith on guitar. There’s an ocean of incredibly talented musicians out there, and the more I go further with this list, the more pop up in my mind. But just a very few can transport somewhere else in just a couple of seconds. His personal and fluid style of fingerpicking immediately caught me. Hobart was a master at banjo, guitar, fiddle and piano. In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes is an album of never-before-released work, taped by Fleming Brown back in the day. It’s a wonderful collection of hidden gems. My son who is eighteen months old already loves this CD.

Steve Gunn — Time Off (Paradise Of Bachelors, 2013)

youtube

Steve Gunn in 2013 was a name I’d already heard of, but it’s with this album that I got more deeper into his stuff. I’m a big fan of this period. Acoustic guitars were leading both the emotional and the structured parts of the tracks. His repetitive and hypnotic patterns mesmerized me. I love the “loop feeling” you can perceive sometimes, and I even love it more when you realize that it wasn’t a loop but a block with so many details that change around the main riff which keeps circularly going. There’s a lot of stuff from Gunn on YouTube, and this take of “Trailways Ramble,” from Live at Atlantic Sound Studios, (there are also more videos from this session) kills it. Played with a beautiful twelve string Guild in trio with Justin Tripp on bass and John Truscinski on drums, if you scan your body while listening, you can feel the rise of the theme through the flesh, in a similar way of feeling subtle sensations by the body scan during meditation practices.

Daniel Bachman — The Morning Star” (Three Lobed Recordings, 2018)

youtube

I met Daniel for the first time in 2013, so I should even name Jesus I’m A Sinner, the one I knew at first. But The Morning Star is the album that showed me other aspects of his art. This is the first recording from him where guitars slightly shift aside to give more space to the various ambient sounds and other instruments. I love how the guitar is relatively “simpler” even in the patterns somehow. It’s pensive, moody, capable to take your hand and guide you through the album; there’s an interesting sound research that matches also with the “invented” tunings. It’s brilliant how just the tuning of the instrument can influence the whole composition process. And, besides the artist that I admire and love so much, there’s even the man that is completely adorable. It’s nice to know that artists you like are sometimes great living beings as well. This set is completely acoustic. Each time I watch it, I feel as astonished by the wall of sound as the first listen.

Bola Sete — Ocean (Takoma, 1975)

youtube

This is the only nylon strings player I’ve mentioned in this list. Bola Sete was a Brazilian guitarist, mostly involved in traditional Bossa nova and samba in the early days. At some point in the 1970s, he met and eventually became friend with John Fahey and moved to the USA. In 1975 Takoma released Ocean, later repressed as Ocean Memories, which is an extraordinary journey through Brazilian folk music and the American Primitive Guitar. This album condenses his virtuoso style and his wild stream of playing at its best, opening worlds of suggestions with its wavy and sensitive flow that colors the album as a canvas.

Yasmin Williams — Urban Driftwood (Spinster, 2021)

youtube

This record has been rooting in my listening since it came out. I knew the previous album from Yasmin Williams but with this I got really into her work. There’s a beautiful virtuoso approach that melts into a world of tenderness; a sensitive style of playing that is both technical and emotional, alternating various methods and instruments such as acoustic guitar, harp guitar and kalimba. She’s graceful, making intricate compositions by apparent effortless gestures and moves. This piece is also inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Really looking forward to what will come next. I love this absolutely gorgeous video of “Juvenescence” from the New York Guitar Festival sessions.

Ledward Kaapana and Friends — Waltz Of The Wind (Dancing Cat Records, 1998)

youtube

This guy simply blew my mind. I’ve been recently introduced to Ledward Kaapana and Hawaiian slack key guitar by Daniel. He’s been doing his thing since the 1970s at least; he has a very nurtured YouTube channel from where you can also find classes! His style is unique, and he has a terrific feel for the rhythmic parts. He’s got this joyful mood that brightens the melody patterns and generally rubs off on the atmosphere. The song “Radio Hula” is probably his most popular hit and there’s this version of it on his channel that is so cool.

Daniel Bachman — Almanac Behind (Three Lobed Recordings, 2022)

youtube

Here I am with the last release from Daniel Bachman, who I already named. This album/film is something that elevates Daniel’s work on another peak. In my opinion, this is the most authentic and touching contemporary political and artistic statement of the last years. There’s an explicit vision of what the climate catastrophe is and how we already crossed the safety guard. This concept resonates in the folds of the sound, sculpting it with new elements such the digital post process (cut-and-pasted slide guitar, pitch drops, glitches), AM and FM radio and a horizontal view of the mix, which knocks you to the couch with ease. There’s something in this album that goes even far beyond music and arts. It’s a hub.

#dusted magazine #listed #davide cedolin #sonic youth #pelt #grateful dead #john fahey #jack rose #ryley walker #elizabeth cotten #hobart smith #steve gunn #daniel bachman #bola sete #yasmin williams #ledward kaapan

1 note · View note

woodencup · 2 years ago

Text

WoodenCup Radio Hour Ep.8

The Brian Jonestown Massacre-It's About Being Free Really Hater - Brave Blood Juni Habel - Chicory Ryley Walker - Great River Road Fenella - Hexagonal Table The Duke Spirit - Cuts Across The Land Ghost Woman - The End of a Gun Native Harrow - Old Kind Of Magic Carla dal Forno - Come Around SUO - Honey I'm Down The Coral Sea - Hero The Warlocks - Caveman Rock Amber Arcades - Just Like Me Meg Baird - Unnamed Drives yeule - Don't Be So Hard on Your Own Beauty Love - My Little Red Book

#The Brian Jonestown Massacre #ryley walker #Amber Arcades #Meg Baird #Love #burt bacharach #mixtape #alternative rock #folk #indie #electro pop

1 note · View note

grace-and-danger · 2 years ago

Video

youtube

Ryley Walker - "Primrose Green" (Official Audio)

#ryley walker #primrose green #music #art

1 note · View note

dudewhoabides · 6 months ago

Video

youtube

Ryley Walker - The West Wind (Live on KEXP)

#youtube

10 notes · View notes

steele-soulmate · 5 months ago

Text

Tattooed Wings, CHAPTER 603, Peter Steele & OFC, Soulmate AU

SUMMARY: Mary Claire Bradley meets her soulmate- literally- the famous Peter Steele of metal group Type O Negative. But will obstacles including trauma, stalkers, and toxic family members get in the way of their life?

WARNING: mentions of child rape (nothing graphic) PTSD, milk kink, soft smut, grinding, assault, fingering, hand jobs, blow jobs, 69, P in V sex, blood, noncon rape, violence, death, vandalism, graffiti, attempted kidnapping, break-ins, wild animal attacks, terrorist attack (sabotage) consensual impregnation, bareback, impregnation kink, creampies, terrorist attacks (shootings) hit and run pedestrian accident, precipitous labor, neonatal death, abandoned baby, child intoxication, death of a minor character, injured baby, kidnapped child

WORDS: 1123

“Hello, Elizabeth! Hello Elle! Hello Katie! Hello Jing! Hello Isabelle!” I greeted the incoming swarm of girls and their American Girl look alikes. Elizabeth had Katie’s backpack slung up onto her shoulder along with hers and was helping the injured girl stump her way up the stairs from the garage into the laundry room. “How was school today?”

“I made a 3D cast for Katie today during lunch period!” Elizabeth announced. “I consulted a bunch of extremely informative articles on Google and Mx. Walker helped me get much of the concept down!”

“Oh, how cool!” I said, smiling as she dumped their backpacks at the door into the dining room before helping her older sister into the house.

“I also had Ryley on standby for if I happened to have any questions!” Elizabeth continued to happily bubble as she kicked off her shoes and settled them into the shoe cubby.

“Oh?” I smiled as Katie collapsed onto the couch in the sunroom, tossing her leg up as she settled herself.

“Yeah, she told me that she would like to do another set of X-rays before she fits the new cast to her broken foot to make certain that the break has stabilized and the swelling had gone down enough!” she continued chattering on, going back to take the discarded backpacks back up to her’s and her sister’s bedrooms. “She also told me just to come in whenever for the X-rays and to have the cast fitted! And also- this is for you and daddy!”

Here, she dropped a piece of paper that was folded into an origami airplane from the second floor landing. I looked up as the airplane landed smoothly onto the kitchen island.

I dried my hands off before opening the envelope.

“LITTLE GIRL IS HERE!” Katie suddenly yelled, having obviously just seen the sleeping baby.“Inside voice now, mo stór,” I scolded her, flattening the paper and reading the incident report filed against one Daryll Johnson- apparently, his wild ways was typical behavior, and that Principal Mayers had ordered an at home suspension while a verdict was discussed about his assault on the Ratajczyk child. She also said that once a decision had been reached, that a meeting will be called between my husband, myself, the school principal, the boy’s parents, the head of the school’s special education department, the boy’s teacher, Katie’s IEP case manager, Niome Wyns and the on campus police officer, who had apparently been a witness to the little terror injuring Katie. “Well, I’m happy that at least some accountability is being taken!” I muttered, neatly folding up the letter and then sticking it onto the refrigerator underneath a bright yellow magnet. “Do you want help with dinner tonight mommy?” Elizabeth called out as she bounded back down the stairs and skipped her way back into the kitchen. “Oh, I’m just going to pop a few pizzas into the oven, but of course I would welcome your help!” I told her, smiling as she opened the refrigerator door to pull out stuff for a salad. She spied the giant bag of garlic knots and tugged that out as well, getting a sheet pan readied for the garlic knots to be slid into the oven as well.“Mo stór, do you want to eat dinner on mommy’s and daddy’s bed tonight?” I called out, already knowing the answer. DING DONGDING DONGDING DONG

“I can get it, mommy!” Katie announced, throwing her legs off from the couch, and limping her way over towards the front door while dancing around Daisy, opening it and greeting James before granting him entrance.

“Hihi Katie! Oh wow- look at your foot!” James greeted her, glancing down at the scribble covered cast on her foot. “Hihi Peter- I bought Nessa’s overnight bag- should I run upstairs and go put it into her big girl bedroom?”

“Sure!” Peter called out from where he was buried beneath all the babies.

“Mommy? Do you have something like a ruler that I can borrow?” Katie came wobbling into the kitchen just then, Mittens following close behind. “My leg feels itchy.”

“Here!” I quickly located the foot long ruler from the junk drawer and handed it to her, watching as she pulled out a chair at the dining room chair and used the ruler to scratch at the annoying itch underneath her cast.

“Thank you, mommy!” Katie grinned before James appeared in the doorway.

“Well, I’m off now!” he announced, opening his arms for a goodbye hug. “Goodbye MC! Goodbye Elizabeth! Goodbye Elle! Goodbye Katie! Goodbye Jing!”

“Goodbye, Mr. James!” Katie called out with a smile on her face as she continued to scratch at the itch on her leg.

“Oh, hello!” James laughed just then on his way out of the front door. “Going in?”

“Yes, I’m here to pick up my daughter,” Walter said awkwardly, coming into the house and greeting Daisy with an affectionate pat on top of her head.

“Daddy!” screeched Baby Kit joyfully.

“Hello there, kitty cat!” he laughed, plucking her from my husband. “Thanks again! Should I drop her off same time tomorrow?”

“Yeah, works for me!” Peter chuckled, setting the other babies back down before raising to his feet and making his way into the kitchen to kiss me. “Sweetheart. When is dinner?”Mo stór, my dear, Irish Gaelic

TAGLISTS ARE OPEN/ ASK BOX IS OPEN/ REQUESTS ARE OPEN/ PLOT BUNNIES ARE WELCOMED

If you liked this, then please consider buying me a coffee HERE It only costs $3!!!

PETER STEELE TAGLIST

@rock-a-noolde

@elianafilthyrose

@ch3rry-c01a

@rockstarslutt

@angelxfuckk

2 notes · View notes