★STRANGE ATTRACTORS AUDIO HOUSE
Huge Fluid Freedom
Huge Fluid Freedom is a singular melding of American primitive & instrumental guitar rock by one of the most important young guitarists currently mining the underground. Sean Smith
conjures fire and sweat, dew and ash through the guitar. From his Bay
Area locale, Smith has been elevating the language of the acoustic steel
string & exploring volume shredding electric excursions
concurrently for the better part of the last decade, forging a tightrope
walking hybridization of 2 seemingly disp…
Decorated
"Of the players involved in the recent resurgence of fingerstyle guitar, Harris Newman has established himself as a primary envoy on the modern day steel-stringer shortlist. As with the case of his brothers-in-arms Jack Rose, Glenn Jones and Steffen Basho-Junghans, each of whom borrow from the past traditions of mavericks Fahey, Basho et al but have re-invented the sound and style with fresh perspectives, Newman distinguishes his music even further with a very idiosyncratic sound. In cont…
Barbecue Bob in Fishtown
Guitarist /composer Glenn Jones claims a lengthy and rich relationship to what his longtime friend John Fahey so famously dubbed "American Primitive Guitar". Aside from being seduced by punk in its latter-70's heyday and brandishing the electric for a large portion of his career (including 20 years as a founding member of post-rock instrumentalists Cul de Sac), it was the acoustic steel-string and the seemingly multi-directional genres born from Fahey's homespun Takoma imprint that informed much…
Red Planet
Red Planet establishes Arborea's complex synthesis of acoustic folk and minimalist drone right out of the gate. From the opening motif of the acoustic guitar lament "The Fossil Sea", Red Planet conjures a panoramic aura, like a lost outtake from Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas soundtrack. As that echoes its way into "Black is the Colour", an eerie and utterly transcendent take on the traditional tune, it becomes mesmerizingly clear how the soft confluence of texture, sound and style meld to create the …
Remember
restocked: Israel isn't exactly konwn as a hotbed for acoustic steel-string guitar music, but Yair Yona's reissue of "Remember" is simply some of the most genre-bending music for solo steel-string guitar since Sandy Bull first opened the doors in the 60s. It's a celebration of the Takoma school, filtered by alternate tunings & yncopations, a John Fahey -esque compositional instint across landscapes of banjo, electronics, resonators, bass guitar & strings.
Sunrise
The music of My Education, a five-piece group from Austin, Texas, tends towards the classical side of the spectrum. If you’ve read any recent think-piece about how the lines between rock bands and classical ensembles are blurring, you could pretty easily swap their name into the list of case studies provided without sacrificing accuracy. Besides recording their own compositions, they’ve also released their take on Arvo Pärt’s taut “Spiegel im Spiegel” and collaborated with the hip-hop group däle…
Eternal
"Eternal finds Sean Smith in peak compositional form, coaxing sensory-enhancing textures from an ensemble of players. His erstwhile acoustic guitar providing the anchor, Smith provides common links with Eastern and Middle Eastern folk music, folk-rock, Appalachian stomp, and Robbie Basho-esque American Raga that bobs and weaves but never ribbons itself away from its common tether. Especially reminiscent of the tilaka-adorned works of Sandy Bull and Peter Walker, with nods towards the Eastern inf…
The Things That We Used to Do
The Things That We Used to Do is a very special, intimate performance DVD of Jack Rose and Glenn Jones, each artist playing solo and together. The footage was shot expressly for this project in a loft in Brooklyn, NY. The takes are live, but the performances are not in front of an audience, but rather in front of the camera. The result is both a crucial document and a total celebration of two artists, collaborators, best of friends whose art serves to illuminate the breadth of solo guitar, from …
The Manifestation
Released in '00, The Manifestation was a clear, one-sided vinyl 12Ó featuring a primitive etching of the sun on the B-side. The music is an extended raga of genre-defying madness, a dizzy melding of acoustic fingerstyle, shamanic chants, chimes, hand percussion, space jam & ghostly vocals that effectively blurs the cultural boundaries of eastern & western folk music. Completely remastered, the reissue is housed in a lovely 6-panel digipak foldout & includes 20+ minutes of music made exclusively …