★Preservation
Burnt Offerings
The Preservation label presents Burnt Offerings, the fourth album from Brooklyn's Padna. As Padna, Nat Hawks initially made his name in the cassette underground on the revered Stunned label with two works of pop experimentalism displaying a bustling -- often boggling -- and vivid imagination. Veritable joyrides in sound and style, these releases were in line with the DIY aesthetic, primitive songcraft and eclectic sonic stew pioneered by the likes of Tall Dwarfs and forwarded by Olivia Tremo…
Home
The Preservation label presents Home, the third album from Olan Mill from Hampshire in the United Kingdom. Olan Mill is the recording project of composer and producer Alex Smalley, who to-date has received rapturous acclaim for his work that holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience. On Home, Smalley has mined his most expansive territory yet to create a thrillingly evocative and deeply felt body of work. The tender clusters of sound that ha…
Slay Me in My Sleep
The Preservation label presents Slay Me in My Sleep, the sixth album from Melbourne's Grand Salvo. Under the guise of Grand Salvo, Paddy Mann has established himself as a songwriter of unique heart and soul with a depth of lyricism matched by warm but widescreen musical vision. 2009's Soil Creatures sealed his reputation, being his most stark and concise statement yet. With Slay Me in My Sleep, Mann has returned to familiar territory, writing a parable as song cycle similar to his epic fairytale…
Body Moving Slowly
The Preservation label presents Body Moving Slowly, the second full-length album from California's Mirror To Mirror. Mirror To Mirror is Los Angeles resident Alex Twomey, who has quietly developed a raft of stunning pieces across several low-key works on his own Jugular Forest label, many approaching a ballad-like form in their beauty. His collaboration with Matthew Sullivan (Earn), 1958-2009, became one of the more highly talked-about projects of the past two years, one outing named as NPR's "B…
The Baroque Atrium
The Preservation label presents The Baroque Atrium, the second full-length album from Seattle's Panabrite. Panabrite is the solo recording project for Norm Chambers, who over a short time has grown a catalog of works showcasing a natural empathy for tapestries of sound that are eclectic, intricate and immediate all at once. Marking new ground in pursuit of pre-digital synthesis, Chambers' work as Panabrite is a shining light among those currently finding inspiration connecting sound explora…
Grandfather Harmonic
The Preservation label presents Grandfather Harmonic, the new full-length album from Sparkling Wide Pressure. The alter ego of Murfreesboro, Tennessee's Frank Baugh, Sparkling Wide Pressure has drawn from a seemingly infinite well of sonic inspiration to record at an incredible rate since 2008, having his work appear on labels such as Digitalis, Stunned, Housecraft and Students Of Decay. This transfixing entry into his weighty catalog pinpoints Baugh's increasing fascination with song-forms…
Bellows And Breath
The Preservation label presents the fourth album from Sydney's Seaworthy. Seaworthy is the musical guise of Cameron Webb, who, for the best part of a decade, has developed singular soundscapes scored with guitar-driven ambience, field recording and digital processing. In recent years, Webb has recorded to acclaim for the esteemed 12K label, releasing the 1897 album in 2009 followed by a collaboration with Matt Rösner, Two Lakes. His compositions reflect his deep connection to environment an…
Reflectors
The Preservation label presents the second album from New York's Nickolas Mohanna. Also working as a visual artist, Nickolas draws unique forms from the wealth of sounds found in New York's complex sprawl and imbues them with feeling and subtlety. The sounds on Reflectors buzz with rich detail and rhythmic interplay for a work alive with beauty and mystery in its atmospheric reach. Previously living in San Francisco for a number of years, Nickolas studied with noted electronic composer Bob…
Light Poured Out Of Our Bones
The Preservation label presents Light Poured Out Of Our Bones, the debut for the pairing of Aaron Martin and Justin Wright. Aaron Martin is a multi-instrumentalist who has previously recorded three acclaimed albums on Preservation; Almond, River Water and Chautauqua. He has developed an idiosyncratic, singular and engaging style with his electro-acoustic compositions tracing an arc for a new kind of Americana steeped in cinematic ambience and alien wonder. Justin Wright is better known as Exp…
Marking Time
The Preservation label presents the reissue edition of Marking Time from UK artist Richard Skelton. Richard has recorded in various guises -- as Clouwbeck, Heidika, Carousell and A Broken Consort. Marking Time was his first work released under his own name, and also the first on a label other than his own, Sustain-Release. Through the prolific output on Sustain-Release, Richard stamped a singular vision with his music: a sound that is at once complex and elemental in its questing nature, cor…
Wind Wound
Early Songs is the work of Glaswegian David Scott. It’s been less than five years since David starting writing music, but he’s been playing guitar for nearly 15 after hearing his first musical inspiration in the lyrical country-blues of fingerpicker Mississippi John Hurt. The second turning point for David’s work came after hearing the violin playing of The Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis. The instrumental trio prompted him to leave singing behind, pick up the fiddle and create emotive instrum…
From The Great American Songbook Label: Preservation
This second collaborative work from the pair is an expansive and ambitious recasting of American music now in the public domain. The influence of the songs collected here is long and widespread for their style and lyricism, forging a rich tradition and ever evolving history. With their interpretations, Carter and Kiefer have taken the songs that have seeped into their souls and extended upon them in such a way that brings something entirely new to their original ideas. It’s something that’s enti…
Monsters Of Felt
Robert Horton’s musical exploits are diverse, heady and spans over three decades. From his early punk days to joining various groups in pursuit of free jazz, drone and even psychedelic hillbilly, Horton is happily hard to pin down. He also makes his own instruments. One found regularly across the 30-plus releases he’s been involved with since 2005 is the ‘boot’, a four-stringed instrument that plays like an otherworldly dobro or slide guitar. Tom Carter has been a lightning rod-like figure…
Seamstress In A Suitcase
Tan or Boil – a pun on the name of bratty short stop from those 1970s Bad News Bears films that stuck – is the alias of the Pittsburgh-born Jason Bacasa. After growing up in Pittsburgh and studying graphic design, Jason took flight from his home town to work freelance in a variety of cities, though his latest and current stint in New York seems more permanent than those in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. On the songwriting side, Jason’s continual travels kept him to just an acoustic guit…
The Possum Wakes at Night
Oliver’s background as an artist partly began in classical music and opera – he sings with the Victorian Opera and curates an annual Schubert recital. However, he also spent many years home-recording his songs as well as playing them in pubs, often accompanied by a compelling yarn during sets. His love for telling a tale also comes into his weekly performing for children’s story time at his local library, this playing a defining role in his unique take on song. Add to that a love of Elvis …
Post
Post is the solo guise for James Wilkinson, who has gleefully cracked the ground between free jazz and punk in Bucketrider and made sonic cinema with the electro-dub-hip-hop fusion of High Pass Filter. He’s also provided innovative sound design as director for the internationally acclaimed Snuff Puppets, and his adventurous spirit runs free through Post’s pop persona. It’s the same ecstatic abandon shared by the likes of Mouse on Mars, Plaid and Caribou. Post’s playful but stirring sense of comp…
Shining on Graveposts
In the all-female duo Coa, Eddie Corman trades on volume and velocity in a howling rock beast that could well fit the bill soundtracking an apocalyptic horror movie. Both Eddie and Marcon first played together in an early incarnation of LSD-March, pysch-blasted legends of the Japanese underground. Combining their names to form a new endeavour into Japanese acid folk, Eddie and Marcon – as Eddie Marcon – have been working in much quieter tones to make delicate, gorgeous and esoteric music. Shinin…
Unknown Music II Transwarp Meditation
The passion for exploratory acoustic music currently in grip has been with Steffen Basho-Junghans for a long time. Based in Berlin, Steffen has been one of the most searching artists in the ever-increasingly loose folk idiom for over two decades. His work on the six and twelve-string guitar makes him a modern-day counterpart to great trailblazers John Fahey and Robbie Basho, from who he takes his name as a creative talisman. While experimentation is a feature of Steffen’s playing, the soul of ac…
Motion - Movement In Australian Sound
Motion – Movement In Australian Sound is a generous, 2-CD overview of 22 artists representing Australia’s burgeoning terrain of electronic and experimental music. From Scott Horscroft’s mesmerising piece for eleven guitars, the sublimely sweet, driving tones of Pretty Boy Crossover, Sue Harding’s melodies from dot matrix printers to renown veteran Alan Lamb’s awe-inducing casting of field recordings from the West Australian outback, Motioncasts wide to expose some of the most creative and …
River Water
Since the release of his debut album Almond in 2006, Aaron Martin has been lauded worldwide for songs of unique warmth, whimsy, feeling and charm – what Australia’s Radio National described as ‘a genre all of its own’, The Age saw as ‘one of the most stunning debuts of the year’, and Foxy Digitalis called ‘rich, beautiful music’. The newfound recognition Almond created for Aaron has him go on to contribute to various compilations and split releases as well as a collaboration with Dutch electroni…