We have two new releases available now on our our-house label, Round Bale Recordings. One comes from Clay Cantrell, an old favorite that we discovered through doing the podcast show and the releases that he initially put out on the great House of Alchemy label. The other comes from the offshoot duo project from the Crazy Doberman collective called Gateway, who we also first heard of through doing the podcast show. We are excited to be able to put these releases out, as we feel like this is the strongest material we’ve heard yet from both of these artists. More information, sound samples, and links to order both titles are provided below. We are also offering a bundle deal on all four of the releases that we put out this summer, which is the cheapest way to get up to speed with what’s been happening with the label. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to include any other titles we have available with this option. If you’re ordering for a record store or mailorder outlet and have an interest in stocking any of these new releases, or any of our other available ones, get in touch for wholesale rates: roundbalerecs [at] gmail [dot] com.
Clay Cantrell’s music came to our attention several years ago through his first two tape releases on the late, great House of Alchemy label. Those tapes with their ragged, dream-folk qualities were such a striking anomaly amongst that label’s more predominant noise-improv roster, but we could never quite shake how eerily compelling those initial tapes were. Cantrell would go on to quietly self-release a few other albums in the ensuing years, one being an LP entitled Songs of Wine & Scythes with the backing group Band of Borges, a title and moniker that underscored the literary thrust that his songwriting revealed as the fog of reverb started to clear around his vocals. Here we are three years on from that last album and Cantrell has penned his most poignant and direct release to date in Barren Form, a collection of acoustic songs about desolation, desperation, desire, and dreams. With minimal instrumental accompaniment, Cantrell draws from real people (“James Agee”) and places (“Jackson”) and from more abstract emotional complexities (“See Rock City”) to capture vivid scenes that bear a distinctive dusted-up, open road quality to them. With Barren Form, Cantrell offers convincing proof that he should be positioned right alongside other notable contemporary singer-songwriters such as Damien Jurado, Phil Elverum, James Toth, Bill Callahan, and Mark Kozelek at the big dance. Don’t be late to the party!
RBR-015: Gateway “Summed-Up-Sounds In Process” CS ($7.50)
Gateway is the handle for the duo aktions of Jason Filer and Tim Gick, core members of the ever-(r)evolving inzane improv collective, Crazy Doberman. Summed-Up-Sounds in Process, the duo’s third release, borrows from American philosopher Justus Buchler’s idea of “summed-up-selves in process” and the notion of “a moving union of seeking and receiving, of forward propulsion and patient absorption.” For this release, the duo broadened their standard improvisational practices by first pairing a wider range of instrumentation together: accordion and jaw harp, typewriter and sax, fender rhodes and clarinet. These initial improvisations, recorded onto tape loops and/or fed through Filer’s modular synthesizer, then provided the structural backbone for the duo to further improvise over. The results are truly brilliant and unquestioningly bonkers: clattering loops mix with sax squeals that flow into enchanting clarinet melodies that dance around throbbing electronic pulses that segue into more animated interactions of vocal mumblings and other unclassifiable sounds. The editing and production work here is flawless, with two side-long pieces flowing seamlessly together to form one impressive whole. There may be fewer hands and less breath involved, but we feel confident in asserting that Summed-Up-Sounds in Process is as equally nuanced and as potent as the Crazy Doberman crew is when they lock into full group-mind.
Follow
