This week’s Mixtape stretches, twists, and shapeshifts… it opens with Glasgow’s Uzganc choir, started by Martin Steuck (aka Wormhook). It is made up of many musicians and non-musicians alike, and its membership is loose and changeable. It closes out with a collaboration between Weirs and The Magic Tuber Stringband, which was recorded live with field recorders inside Virginia’s pitch-black Crozet Tunnel.
We’ve also got new music from Spencer Cullum, our latest Off the Shelf Guest, BIG|BRAVE, Wendy Eisenberg, Colleen, Prymek & Sage and Bill Orcutt – taken from “Music in Continuous Motion,” his second studio album for four guitars, which has just been reviewed by Glenn Kimpton here.
Plus:
- balladeer Wheatie Mattiasich, whose voice is described as that “used for medieval incantations, traditional ballads, and ancient and supernatural myths about solitude, played through the drainpipe.”
- One of China’s most prolific world music veterans, Hugjiltu hails from a musical family in Jarud Banner, Inner Mongolia. He “plays the guitar with five strings. Not used to the standard chord-forms of Western guitar, he invented his own system of tuning, combining the three-string Mongolian lute and the two-string horsehead fiddle, both of which he started playing as a child.”
- Released on Cafe Oto’s in house label Otoroku, we’ve a 2024 set from harpist Rhodri Davies – “In this solo harp performance, recorded at OTO in April 2024, Davies’ inimitable playing style is showcased to full effect, with a sound that seems to span from Welsh harp to arched or ‘bow’ harp playing found in Sub-Saharan African traditions; Indian ragas to the circling, synthesized arpeggios of Laurie Spiegel, touching on the insistent player-piano pieces of Conlon Nancarrow along the way.”
- And finally, Oliver Barrett, with Self-towing “Snug” – a photograph found in his grandfather’s scrapbook becomes the catalyst for an album steeped in memory and family. The image, taken on a 1930s Norfolk holiday, shows a teenage boy towing a small vessel called a “Snug” across the Broads, captured with an accidental grandeur that belies its simplicity. He traces connections across generations — a grandfather’s runic handwriting, shared afternoons among oil paintings in Bristol Museum, a life of carefully kept mementoes. Begun a year prior and completed in the weeks following his grandmother’s death at 104, the album stands as a loving memorial to both grandparents and the quiet details they left behind. Read more here.
Playlist
00:00 Uzganc Choir – Chalice
02:30 Spencer Cullum – Rowan Tree
06:13 Wendy Eisenberg – Vanity Paradox
12:21 Hugjiltu – 象山 Mount Elephant
16:13 Wheatie Mattiasich – Canyon
19:09 BIG|BRAVE – the ineptitude for mutual discernment
24:06 Bill Orcutt – Unfinished not fragile
26:35 Colleen – Mis armas se habían caído al suelo
28:36 Rhodri Davies – Gardd a Thŷ
34:01 Oliver Barrett – Self-towing “Snug”
35:50 Prymek & Sage – Hill Blocks View
45:58 Weirs and Magic Tuber Stringband – Tunnel