#salsburg

[dustedmagazine]

Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Nathan Salsburg & Tyler Trotter — Hear the Children Sing the Evidence (No Quarter)

How can you make two strangely transcendent songs originally written and recorded by Lungfish even more metaphysically oblique? Apparently, you set Will Oldham (appearing here under his long-standing Bonnie “Prince” Billy appellation), Nathan Salsburg and Tyler Trotter to work, with few limitations on studio time. The two album-side-long covers — of “Hear the Children Sing” from Lungfish’s Love Is Love (2003), and of “The Evidence” from Pass and Stow (1994) — find a weirding place, somewhere between transfixing and trance-like. The effect is more magical and peculiar than any of those adjectives can suggest.

The expansive lengths of the performances (just shy of 20 minutes for “Hear the Children Sing” and just over 21 minutes for “The Evidence”) create a number of rich textures and musical phenomena. Principal among these is the music’s repetition — the simple melodies of Salsburg’s prettily plucked guitars, the understated percussive programming from Trotter and Oldham’s cycling through the lyrics, from Lungfish’s resident visionary and spiritual troublemaker Daniel Higgs. Oldham practices a jealous fealty to the original lexical choices and syntax, but he alters his vocal phrasing slightly here and there as he runs through the lyrics for both songs at least four times, his tenor simultaneously buttery and airy.

With repetition, some snatches of lyrics and certain words acquire curious qualities. Often they strive toward a sort of pure sound, leaving some — if not quite all — of their capacity to mean behind. The words empty, attempting to register only as strings of phonemes. The effect is something like reading Gertrude Stein, especially some passages of The Making of Americans. That’s interesting, but even more intriguing are the phrases and clauses that retain their insistent significations, in spite of the numerous repetitions. See the sort-of refrain of “Hear the Children Sing”: “Oh, the devil is a flower / Plucked from a cloud.” The array of metaphors there, operating with ambiguous relation to everyday idioms, seems primed for emptying. But the symbolic power of Higgs’ figures persists. Nothing coheres, precisely, but you can’t stop thinking about what the words might mean. They are too potent to mean nothing.

Both performances are lovely and odd (and they are rendered distinct by flourishes from other musicians recruited into the sessions: Zak Riles’ unobtrusive banjo picking in “Hear the Children Sing,” Ned Oldham’s gentle, pellucid electric guitar in “The Evidence”). But it’s Oldham’s singing and Higgs’ lyrics that make Hear the Children Sing the Evidence so memorably discomfiting. These lyrics from “The Evidence” are suggestive: “If you’re outside the lingo / If you’re outside the jargon / You talk beyond a system / You’re talking out of turn.” Establishing a position outside of the specialized “jargon” of Western discourses of rationality and “evidence” seems to be one of the intentions of these songs. But their repetition inevitably creates a “system” in which things (the sound of notes, the pluck of a string, the arrival of a lyric) unerringly come in their turn.

Perhaps the repetition itself wants to project us outside of those systems, into a transcendent, entrancing beyond. Perhaps it does. Perhaps these are the wrong questions to ask. The music doesn’t care. It’s too busy being beautiful.

Jonathan Shaw

[2000mallow]

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg - First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 22, 2015

Head over to Aquarium Drunkard to read my conversation with six-string kings James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, whose brand-new All Gist (out now on Paradise of Bachelors) is one of my favorite records of 2024 thus far. These guys aren't just extraordinary guitarists, they're also very nice dudes.

As mentioned at the tail-end of the interview, Jim and Nathan are planning some live Gist gigs in the coming months — their first real tour since 2015! To get prepped for that, check out the above video from back in those days, expertly filmed by Elkhorn's Jesse Sheppard. If you're a guitarist, it'll be fun (and perhaps frustrating) to see how casually Elkington and Salsburg dispatch these intricately detailed tunes. Unfair!

And how's about Aquarium Drunkard?! We're a couple weeks into the new age, with memberships rolling in fast 'n' furious. Tons of killer stuff going up on the regular, including terrific High Llamas and Shabaka Hutchings interviews, a Lagniappe Session from the Reds, Pinks and Purples, a fresh Bandcamping column ... and so much more! If this is the kind of thing you dig, consider pitching in.

[sinceileftyoublog]

James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg Interview: Poise, Levity, and Easygoingness

Photo Credit: James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg

BY JORDAN MAINZER

All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors), the third album of guitar duets from exploratory, thoughtful players James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, sounds like what it is: two longtime friends and collaborators playing together, equal parts casual and focused. Since their 2015 album Ambsace, each has been busy, separately and together. Elkington's released three solo albums, played as part of Eleventh Dream Day, Brokeback, and Jeff Tweedy's live band, and recorded with Steve Gunn, Nap Eyes, and many more. Salsburg's dropped a bevy of albums and has played on records by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Shirley Collins, and others. Meanwhile, the two have come together on four records by Salsburg's partner Joan Shelley, and Elkington produced Salsburg's Psalms, his 2021 album of arrangements of Hebrew psalms. Their duo records, however, are born of the most natural collaboration, each bringing to the table melodies they think--perhaps know--the other will respond to, combining them, and being open to feedback or changing gears entirely.

All Gist, specifically, carries the distinct quality of the Chicago winter during which it was recorded: You can picture Elkington and Salsburg sitting around the kitchen table, each culling from their vast repertoires and tendencies, creating something to warm their bodies and hearts and perk their heads and ears, unaware of any blusters outside. The songs are reflective of their shared artistic interests and inspirations, and they're rounded out by the presence of musical contemporaries with whom each has fostered relationships over the years. Opener "Death Wishes to Kill", which takes its title from T.F. Powys' Unclay, sports lilting guitar melodies that offer an affable sway, along with Wanees Zarour's violin solo. The minimal "Explanation Point" bounces along a groove that sounds bigger than it is, almost gestalt, as Jean Cook's strings and Anna Jacobson's brass shimmer. Moments of percussion come from other instruments like hand drums ("Long in the Tooth Again"), along with Wednesday Knudsen's woodwinds ("Nicest Distinction"), or as part of the sheer tactility of guitar scrapes and textures. The self-reflexive "Numb Limbs" gets its title from the physical aftereffects of playing a song that took forever to come together; you feel the spritely guitar picking and breakneck tempo in your own fingers.

Of course, All Gist has a few interpolations, namely a gentle, quiet, start-stopping version of Howard Skempton's "Well, Well, Cornelius" and a taut, concise combination of two traditional Breton dance tunes in "Rule Bretagne". Easily, the most unexpected song on the album is a version of Neneh Cherry's classic late 80s jam "Buffalo Stance". Oscillating and slowed down to an expanse, one guitarist plays Cherry's lyrical line, the other the song's instrumental melody, making something both recognizable and nostalgic as well as emblematic of the duo's adventurous nature. That combination, indeed, is the gist of Elkington and Salsburg.

Earlier this month, both guitarists answered some questions over email about All Gist, their creative process, covering songs, and their sometimes-overlapping, oft-diverging taste in art. Read their responses below, edited for clarity.

Photo Credit: Joan Shelley

Since I Left You: Why was it time again to make an album together? James Elkington: We’d been talking about it since we made the last one, but the truth is that we’ve both just been too busy. I started making solo records again after the last one, plus I got to produce one for Nathan, and we both help out with Joan Shelley’s records, so it never felt like we weren’t working together anyway. We were just working on projects in a different way. I think that Nathan and I both think there’s something about the duo’s music that is different from the other things we do, so we were keen to get back to it at some point. Fortunately for us, we got an invitation to play at a guitar festival in Chicago, and we used that as an excuse to start working on new material. I should also mention that our wives kept bugging us to do it again.

SILY: How was your collaboration on All Gist unique as compared to your other records together, and how was it similar? JE: We hadn’t played together like this for something like 7 years, so I was interested to see if we could even do it. But our writing together was as quick and easy as it ever was, and in that sense, it was really similar to how we worked before. Nathan has always worked with longer forms than me, but this time, I wanted to follow his lead a bit more in terms of writing longer pieces with less changes and more textures. We weren’t concerned this time with being able to play all of this stuff live, so we left more space for orchestration and overdubs. Nathan Salsburg: We’ve each lived through a world of experiences in the past ten years, musical and otherwise. Now that we’re each squarely into our middle age, I think the poise, levity, and easygoingness that should be attendant on this period of life show up in the music at [the] pitch they didn’t in the past.

SILY: Was there a lot of improvisation in the process of combining the different instrumental motifs you each brought to the recording session? JE: Because we don’t have a great deal of time to work together, we find things go much quicker if we come up with rough musical sketches by ourselves and then present them to the other. Nothing is ever written in stone, and the level of trust is very high. Anything Nathan suggests for one of my ideas is going to improve it. Both of us are more concerned with coming up with something that sounds cohesive and keeping the ball rolling than having any personal agenda for how this thing should be, and we always leave enough space for us to be surprised by what we end up with. I rarely have any idea what Nathan is playing, but I like how it sounds when it’s finished. We did experiment with recording something completely improvised and liked the results, but it sounded like a different record, so we didn’t use it. Maybe that’ll be the next one.

SILY: How or at what point in making each song do you determine whether it needs more musical accompaniment, from other instruments and/or players? JE: That’s a good question, and I’m not sure I have an answer, but the plan seems to be to write a piece that can stand by itself for the two guitars, record that to our satisfaction (which is nearly always the first take we can manage that has all the right parts), then start throwing other instruments at it to see what sticks. Most of that approach is me in my studio adding things and then taking them off again. There are certain pieces where, as were writing them, we can hear that a solo instrument would sound great in a certain part. Wannees Zarour’s solo in "Death Wishes To Kill" was like that. There are songs, like "All Gist Could Be Yours", where for a repeating chord sequence to have the effect we’re going for, its going to need a lot of support from other instruments, and we talked about that as we were writing it.

Cover art by Chris Fallon

SILY: Do you have a backlog of other people's songs you think might be fun or fulfilling to cover or reimagine as a guitar duet? What makes a song fit for a cover from your two artistic voices? JE: Well, I’m a little concerned that there’s a potential novelty aspect to our doing a lot of covers, but maybe it's okay. We certainly didn’t go out of our way to think of any for this record. Nathan suggested "Buffalo Stance" early on just because he loved the song and all the parts. I was resistant at first, just because I thought there wasn’t enough there for us to work with harmonically, but there’s so much good stuff going on with the synths and the bassline in that tune that it became more a process of picking and choosing what aspects of the song we wanted to shine a light on, at what time. Our Smiths cover from the last record is like that, too. It switches from the guitar line to the vocal depending on where we’re at or what seems to be most important, so I suppose we have a system for doing this. I think the only criteria we have for picking a song is whether one of us really really likes it and the other one can get their head around it.

SILY: "Death Wishes To Kill" takes its title from a T.F. Powys novel you both read. Do the two of you tend to recommend books, films, albums, etc. to each other a lot? Do you ever find you're about to recommend the same thing to one another? JE: I was going to write that we don’t have a huge amount of overlap, but I’m remembering going to his house when we hadn’t known each other long and being confronted with what appeared to be a wall of my own books. Its not as if we like exactly the same things, but there are some writers and records that we both like that NO-ONE else I can think of likes, so when Nathan suggests a book, I usually get to it pretty quickly. I think Nathan was reading the Powys novel, Unclay, and sent me a screen shot of one of the passages in the book with the caption "this is for you" underneath. He also sent me a link to an Australian liquor store commercial from the early 90’s because he knew it would make me laugh for a day and a half, and it did. NS: I remember we made common cause over Max Beerbohm not long after we met—Zuleika Dobson, maybe—but yeah, we each have some preoccupations that the other couldn’t give much of a shit about. Like, I can’t say mid-century British horror movies do a whole lot for me. I’m remembering when Jim spent the better part of an hour trying to explain the appeal of U.S. Maple, and I can’t say he succeeded. And Jim couldn’t care less about rural American string-bands of the late 1920s. But when we have an overlap—Unclay, say, or the totally under-appreciated Yorkshire singer-songwriter Jake Thackray, or Alan Partridge—and yes, these overlapping things do tend to all be English—it’s always stuff we’re super, super jazzed about.

SILY: Can you tell me about the cover art for All Gist? NS: The artist’s name is Chris Fallon, an old friend of mine from when I lived in New York City 20+ years ago. He’s a phenomenal painter, and I love his figures, his palette, and the scenes/settings that he dreams up. I asked him to create a portrait of us, and this is what he did. He’s never met Jim and hasn’t seen me in quite a few years, but I feel like he nailed something of Jim’s and my dynamic, equal parts earnest, bizarre, silly.

[knightofleo]

Nathan Salsburg | IX

[ospiteepasseggero]

Listen/purchase: Hear The Children Sing The Evidence by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Nathan Salsburg & Tyler Trotter

[pirepoumon]

albums engineered in a lab to make me, specifically, go insane. two twenty minute lullaby cover salsburg/bpb collab when i've been mainlining nothing but psalms, wolfroy, and i see a darkness this week? take me out now.

[thepoisonroom]

Despite the progressive politics of early zombie films like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, modern narratives about zombies are often strikingly conservative, displaying a world that rewards rugged individualism and presents a pessimistic view of human nature. The recent HBO drama The Last of Us, based on the acclaimed 2013 video game of the same name, exemplifies this tendency. The show takes place two decades after an outbreak of a zombifying fungal infection triggers global societal collapse. In this post-apocalyptic world, a fascist government violently maintains order within walled-off “quarantine zones,” while a brutal resistance group called the Fireflies strives to overthrow them. The Last of Us follows the cynical smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) and a teenager named Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who is immune to the fungus, on their treacherous journey to meet up with a team of Fireflies who believe they can use her to create a vaccine. As Joel and Ellie bond against the backdrop of a dog-eat-dog world where no one can be trusted, the show presents a largely right-wing vision in which the only path to redemption is through caring for one’s immediate kin. According to Neil Druckmann—the co-creator of the series as well as the game and its sequel, who spent his early childhood in a West Bank settlement—elements of The Last of Us are informed by the politics of Israel/Palestine. On this week’s episode of On the Nose, editor-in-chief Arielle Angel, managing editor Nathan Goldman, fellow Dahlia Krutkovich, and contributor Hazem Fahmy discuss the politics of the show, its relationship to Israel/Palestine, and its evocations of the Holocaust. Note that this episode includes spoilers for the HBO series, as well as the game and its sequel, which will form the basis of future seasons of the show. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” 

[bellshazes]

the only song in the world this week

[dustedmagazine]

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg — All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors)

In this third album of guitar duets, James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg perform a complicated sort of dance, their separate instruments executing, light and agile motifs, sometimes in concord, other times slightly out of sync. The melody refracts through their separate interpretations, so that you often feel like you’re hearing it from multiple angles or doubled with an echo. Though some of the songs have a twinge of melancholy, most of them explode with joy. Their two instruments chase each other like dogs at happy play.

Elkington and Salsburg pick up their musical conversation after a long hiatus. Ambsace, their last collaboration, came out in 2015. But like the best reunions, this one is free of awkwardness. They treat each other with warmth and respect throughout. The guitars tangle but never step on one another, each player leaving space for the other.

The pair also makes judicious use of other talent to bolster and deepen their sound. The opener “Death Wishes to Kill” gets a firm grounding from Nick Macri’s acoustic bass; he lends a steadiness to this playful tag in thumps that resonate and mark time without staking too prominent a place for themselves in the sonic mix. But even more striking is the wild skirl of violin that Wanees Zarour adds, wheeling around the guitar line in a throaty emotional timbre. Zarour played on the last Elkington/Salsburg disc. He is a Palestinian-American multi-instrumentalist and academic who teaches at the University of Chicago.

“Nicest Distinction” shows how the foundation that Elkington and Salsburg lay down can be opened up and expanded.  It begins in stately ritual, a madrigal with a little blues introduced in the way the phrases end with a vibrating bent notes.  It’s just the two of them for a good long while, one strumming splayed chords, the other picking a melodic path in and among the meditations. Yet this long piece kicks into a gallop towards the end, with wild tom-tom fill and woodwinds played by Wednesday Knudsen.

All Gist will likely be lumped into the folk category, being acoustic and not quite modern. Still there is really only one actual folk tune on it, the mortality-shaded frolic of “Rule Bretagne,” based, per the title, on the music of seagoing France. Well, maybe not. “Explanation Point” digs pretty deep into country blues, the notes sliding and tumbling down a sunlight rambling path. Here, as elsewhere, melodic lines zing off each other then carom back for a moment of concord.

But really, the most interesting cuts veer the furthest from conventional folk. “Well, Well Cornelius,” originally written for piano by the British composer Howard Skelton, offers a radiant procession of chords framed by the regular architecture of picking. It is serene and unhurried and really quite beautiful. So, is “Buffalo Stance” a Neneh Cherry song you might remember for its pop-locking hip hop beat and strobe lit video. These artists distill it down to melody—a tune you might not have focused on the original, very different version—and transform the cut into a gentle, bucolic ramble. Ironically, in the video, Neneh introduces her song with an aside of “how melodic” which feels like sarcasm, but these two guitarists heard it there all along. Just lovely.

Jennifer Kelly

[cricketpress]

NEW poster for our pals at Joseph-Beth Booksellers for...

Jeff Tweedy: in conversation with Nathan Salsburg discussing World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music

Thursday, November 9, 2023 - 7:00pm 3250 Victory Pkwy, Cincinnati, OH45207

Poster Details: 2 color screenprint 16" x 20" Edition of 100 Available at event

[theretirementhome]

Nathan Salsburg - XIII

Buy it here.

[ursaminorjim]

“Psalm 147″ - Nathan Salsburg, Psalms

[still-single]

Heathen Disco updates

The most recent shows are as below. Maybe you'd like to listen.

Show #326 (Feb 12, 2023)

HOUR 1

James Brown – Stone to the Bone

The Supremes – Stoned Love

The Chi-Lites – Stoned Out of My Mind

Clark-Hutchinson – Free to Be Stoned

Nathan Salsburg – XIV

Black Sabbath – A National Acrobat

Cheater Slicks – Fear

The Drin – Mozart on the Wing

Come – Recidivist

FACS – When You Say

Equipment Pointed Ankh – Paper Sink

Del the Funky Homosapien – Eye Examination

HOUR 2

De La Soul – Held Down

Lyn Collins – Think About It (Live at the Apollo)

Quix*o*tic – Tell It Like It Is

Crushed – Coil

The Passions – Runaway

Mamitri Yulith Empress Yonagunisan – Gala Saver

Heavy Blanket – Danny

Miaow – Fate

Central Line – Walking Into Sunshine

Gina X Performance – No G.D.M.

Goblin – Roller

Doom Flower – The Space

Yo La Tengo – Brain Capers

HOUR 3

Oneida – Paralyzed

3rd Bass – 3rd Bass Theme A.K.A. Portrait of the Artist as a Hood

Casa Nostra – Insomnia (extended mix)

Detroit Emeralds – Feel the Need

Ramsey Lewis Trio – Opus #5 / Uhuru

Exploratorium – Number 09

Show #325 (Feb 5, 2023)

Art Ensemble of Chicago – Funky AECO

Mutamassik – Wishik

Lifted – Total Care Zero

Shizuka – Plan for Solitude

Beau Wanzer – A Burrowing Booboo

Nuovo Testamento – Heat

The Invincible Limit – Push (New Mix)

Experimental Products – Glowing in the Dark

Miss Nude – Taste My Acid Fruit

Syamese – Drum

Portion Control – Go Talk

Equipment Pointed Ankh – Port of Indiana

Echo & the Bunnymen – The Subject

Q Lazzarus – Goodbye Horses (Demo 2)

Nun – In Blood

Six Finger Satellite – Where Humans Go

Iggy Pop – Funtime

Terry – Gold Duck

SUSS – Ash Fork, AZ

Glyders – Maria’s Hunt

The House of Love – Road

The Loft – Your Door Shines Like Gold

Celibates – Coming Alone

Marcie’s Still Waiting – For You (Not For You)

Shinichi Atobe – First Plate 3

Th’ Blisks – A Salve

Dippers – Looking for a Sphere Pt. 1

Ulaan Passerine – Light of Lights

Adonis – No Way Back

Kraze – The Party (Original Mix)

Paul Johnson – After Dark

Tirzah – Sink In (Actress remix)

Om Unit – Pursuit

Show #324 (Jan 29, 2013)

Tom Verlaine – Souvenir from a Dream

Love Child – Stumbling Block

Love – Softly to Me

Owen Maercks – Intense Young Man

Television – Marquee Moon (1974 demo)

Peace Regime – untitled

Skull Practitioners – Intruder

Temple – Heathen

Rancid X – Old Sex Queen

X – I Don’t Wanna Go Out

Beau Wanzer – A Dead Person’s Monologue

The Real Kids – Nowadaze Kids

Holy Tongue – Spirit Mask

Sleaford Mods – UK Grim

Miss Lie – Depression

Exhaustion – Old Mickey

Midnight Mines – Hollow Sky

Primal Scream – All Fall Down

Virgin Prunes – Baby Turns Blue

The C.I.A. – Better

Exploded View – You Got a Problem, Son

Violet French and the Horrible – I Want the Sky to Be Crying

Dippers – Looking for a Sphere Pt. 2

Blatant Dissent – Eleven Days

Circus Lupus – New Cop Car

Lush – Nothing Natural

The Fall – Y.F.O.C. / Slippy Floor

Obe – untitled

Sightless Pit – Calcified Glass

The Ex – Evolution

Oozing Wound – Hypnic Jerk

Nitzer Ebb – Captivate

George Brigman & Split – Blowin’ Smoke

Meg Baird – Star Hill Song

Equipment Pointed Ankh – From Inside the House

Dalibor Cruz – Depose the Influencer

Manuel Göttsching – E2-E4 side A

[twistedsoulmusic]

In “All Gist,” guitarists James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg weave an intricate tapestry of fingerstyle magic. The duo’s third collaboration brims with dexterity and passion, pushing the boundaries of folk. Guest musicians add symphonic depth to the duo’s captivating interplay.

[parkerbombshell]

Strange Harvest June 9

Strange Harvest 9pm EST bombshellradio.com Archival Shows available on bombshellradiopodcasts.com Strange Harvest (9-10pm EST) digs into new issues and reissues for your monthly round up of sounds few others are playing. In an ideal world, you’ll find something to change your life. Short of that, you might just discover a new passion. Join us: https://bombshellradio.com/   #newmusic #independentradio #newmusicnow   AC/DC: Hells Bells Liraz: Haarf Camera Obscura: We’re Going to Make it in a Man’s World James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg: Buffalo Stance The Durutti Column: Finding the Sea Billions of Comrades: 1480 Leonidas and Hobbes: What is Space Big|Brave: Canon in Canon Sparks: Tryouts for the Human Race Deep Purple: Lazy         Read the full article