O Fool - Walk Off A Cliff

I know very little about this band but I believe they hail from St. Louis.  Released on Chicago's Manic Static, this release has been one of my favorites from the label.  I remember when I first heard this I think I described as if Ian Curtis had Tom Waits' band backing him. The music has a rare sort of baroque-ish/parlour music feel and is arranged exquisitely.  It's heavy on the piano and viola while the singer croons with a deep and dramatic vibrato with occasional female vocals backing him up.  Really nice sounding tape.  The Cliff.

Dust Bunnies - We Are Not Alone

Paul Nixon rules.  Hard.  I met Paul through mutual friends and subsequent singing in The Blue Ribbon Glee Club for a couple years.  We lived a couple blocks from each other in Pilsen some years ago and hung out frequently one summer when I recorded an album out of my apartment for Paul's band/moniker, Dust Bunnies.  Sadly this is not that album, BUT it's still an amazing effort from Paul.  Recorded and multitracked almost solely on the Zoom H4N, this album sounds far from what one might imagine to be recorded on such a device (for those familiar with the H4N).  They don't sound bad at all but the common use for the recorder is to capture live performances.  Paul surprised the hell out of me when he played this album and tells me it was multi-tracked on the humble device.  Some real mastery of one's tools went in to the process here.

As for the music, I recall Paul posting a Facebook event for a show a while back and called the Dust Bunnies "The Leaders of the Turn It Down Revolution." Or something to that effect, I think.  I always liked that idea for this band.  Thoughtful (and deeply universal) lyrics (complete with Crystal's elegant harmonies) and good feeling chord progressions sprinkled with careful keyboard/glockenspiel melodies sometimes break way for hypnotic grooves laced with a type of guitar shredding that only Paul Nixon can unleash.  Shredding gets old real quick, but Paul's take on it is dope.  I hesitate to reference other musicians here, but this album in particular seems to take notes from the school of Phil Elvrum, Stephen Merritt, and Tim Kinsella.  Decent company, I'd think.  Take a flight on Paul's Flugzeug.

Willow 2007 Field Recordings

I finally got around to organizing/editing my digitized cassette recordings of the '07 Willow Folk Festival.  If you are unfamiliar, see my previous posts here and here. That year's tapes seemed to be rolling during the more candid and lesser heard moments of Willow, though there are plenty of stage performances on this collection.  This was also the year of the infamous windstorm that took tents in to the creek and sent folks in to the church for a brief spell.  All was calm later that night and I recall staying up till dawn with the tape recorder in tow.  A lot of the fireside tunes are a bit more subdued on this one, likely due to the windstorm putting a damper on things.  I decided not to divide this collection in to stage and fireside recordings.  Re-live the magic: Part One and Part Two.

Stephen Molyneux - Called to Leave

The fantastic Lee Noble posted a link to this album online today.  Been on repeat ever since.  Really raw and honest folk/country stuff going on here.  I realize there is a ton of that out there these day but this stands out to me for some reason.  Maybe it will for you, too.  I don't know how to buy or download the album but you can stream it for free here.

Paul Yarn Bunkbeds - soft slacks=sweatpants

I've been wanting to post this tape for ages now and finally pulled out the digitized files from the vaults of my hard drive.  This warped lo-fi "folk" duo comes from two of the most interesting and inspiring people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.  Bryan and Lindsey made some of the most honest and unpretentious music I've ever witnessed.  The couple have an amazing(ly) cute dynamic that exists in real life as much as it does in their music that makes one long for the type of relationship that reaches a level of telepathic understanding that is rarely achieved these days. 

I lived above Bryan in an apartment building in Logan Square back in 2004  or 2005.  We had an immediate common ground after he stopped over and saw a Bicycle Day CD and a slew of other Scratch and Sniff Records swag strewn about as I had just received a lovely care package from Mark Nichols (see the Meanders Afoot post for Mark's music).  Turned out that Bryan and Mark were childhood friends and he was quite familiar with the Dekalb music scene that I was just discovering and falling head over heels for.  Bryan introduced the 21 year old me to a lot of neat things during the period I lived above him.  He was working at Intuit Gallery and recommended I see a show he booked there of the incredible jazz drummer Han Bennick.  Unforgettable performance.  He was also the first person to expose me to the Henry Darger phenomenon that was just being uncovered at the time he was working there.

I met Bryan's girlfriend Lindsey some time later and I was always a bit in awe of the level of intuitive communique they subscribed to as well as their shared interest in the weird (in a good way, of course.)  They just seemed like the penultimate example of a wholesome couple and their music is surely representative of that connection.  Paul Yarn Bunkbeds played a few living room shows over the next year or two (as well as the very first show at the infamous Treetop loft) before moving to Indiana and I always cherished the intimate gatherings in which they performed.  The song "3s come and go" made me so happy and I always requested it when they played.  Anyhow, enough of the personal ranting here.  This is the call.

NOGGINCRUSH - Wolf Gets Paid

Sometime over the fall I took a trip to the Noggincrush Windfarm and was invited to participate in a NC recording session.  This is the result.  If you're reading this, then you probably already know the deal.  If not, see the previous NOGGINCRUSH post.  The title comes from stories I was relaying about Little Howlin' Wolf.  Time Stops inquired: "When's Wolf gonna get paid?"

Walt Falbo - Digger's Demos Volume 2: The Lost Four Track Years

Round two from good 'ol Walt Falbo.  Walt expands his horizons on this release with the advent of keyboard usage and overdubs, presumably due to the discovery of the four track recorder for these sessions.  Here's the track list.  All songs by Walt Falbo except where otherwise indicated:














1. There Stands the Glass (Webb Pierce)
2. Everybody Let Up (The Apples In Stereo)
3. Quartermaster's Wintertime (Bill Fox)
4. One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen)
5. Else (Built to Spill)
6. Gold Star For Robot Boy (Guided By Voices)
7. Camille (Bill Fay)
8. Watermelon Machine Gun (Leo Kottke) *note* Upon moving in with Walt earlier this month, he discovered in my collection the LP which this song was released.  When he was recording the Kottke song, it was all from memory and guessed at the name of the song.  The ACTUAL song he recorded here was The Fisherman, but we'll leave it as it is on the liner notes.
9. Red Shoes (Elvis Costello)
10. Ingrid Bergman (Guthrie/Bragg)
11. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Tom Waits)
12. There's a Place (The Beatles)
13. The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)

Download here.

***Just noticed I imported the GBV song as Gold Star for ROCKET Boy rather than ROBOT Boy.  Please make the appropriate corrections after you download.  Sorry all!***

NOGGINCRUSH - West Virginia

NOGGINCRUSH sounds pretty much like the name would imply.  These exclusively improvised workings of childhood friends Tim Stoops and Andy Herald come to you from the rural outpost of Anchor, Illinois.  The duo consists of Andy playing drums with one hand and keyboards with the other while Tim (Time Stops) navigates the realm of his subconscious to pull out some profound moments of lyrical genius.  Andy later overdubs some bass lines to glue it all together.  The result is a somewhat "krauty" juggernaut of a sound that feels like the wheels could fall off the whole thing at any given moment.  It can be a confusing listen to the untrained ear, but I think that is very telling of the cathartic mindset in which these gems are created. West Virginia is their "break-up album" if they ever had one, most obvious on the last song, Space Tether (personal favorite).  You can listen to more NOGGINCRUSH nuggets here: https://soundcloud.com/noggincrush

Get crushed.

Estasy - S/T

I've been pretty obsessed with Estasy this last week after seeing a video post from How To Dress Well's twitter account.  I was able to track down a download of this at Bedroom Fantasia. I also ordered the tape of her(?) second album on Living Tapes and proves to be well worth the dough as well.  Estasy, from what I can tell hails from Italy.  She plays some seriously soothing folkish melodies sung in the high register and approach of what sounds like a 7 year old child virtuoso.  Each song usually features either acoustic guitar, warbled bird chirps, toy keyboards, pianos and the like to accompany these insanely beautiful and other-wordly vocal melodies.  All of these sounds are filtered through what I can only assume was a handheld tape recorder, ever increasing the innocent authenticity that this album executes and achieves unapologetically.  There are gorgeous forces at work inside of this artist and I feel lucky to have had this music come in to my life in the last week.  Below is a video for a song from this album.  Take the pill.

Demons - It's Golden Now

I was realizing how under-represented Paul Kim (aka 1/2 of Demons) is on this blog.  Another formidable pillar of the the Dekalb music scene in the aughts, he's been making sample based music for the better part of the last 5 years or so with fellow pillar, Sam Cholke, under the guise of Demons.  I'm not sure of their exact process(es) but Demons always achieves a completely natural-sounding approach to sampling records and creating beats on top of them.  This particular EP features Elena Haliczer (yet another Dekalb acquaintance of theirs, presumably) singing over top of old soul and R&B samples.  In a sense, it's almost as if they are creating brand new soul "standards" by using the very elements of the originals that made them standard in the first place.  This EP goes well with a gin and tonic whilst thinking of someone you love.  You can download this EP for free and many more Demons releases at their bandcamp.