thrill jockey
Marisa Anderson shares ‘Sarvi Simin,’ the second single from “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, Vol. 1,” out May 22nd on Thrill Jockey. The track — an ecstatic duet between Anderson’s guitar and Gisela Rodríguez Fernández’s violin — interprets a piece from a 1977 Melodiya Records release, transcribed while Anderson travelled by bus through southern Mexico.
In conversation with Harper Mahood, Barry Walker Jr. talks about “Paleo Sol,” his Thrill Jockey debut — a record born from new age lullabies, ancient oxidised soils, and dark forces banging on the door. “I want people to look past the horizon and try to break the material veil that we’re all living in.”
Marisa Anderson’s The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, Vol. 1 draws from the late Harry Smith’s vast private collection to present nine guitar arrangements sourced from regions the US has been in conflict with since 1970. First single Taqsim for Guitar offers a meticulous reworking of a 1955 Syrian field recording — Anderson’s fretted instrument reaching, carefully, toward music it was never designed to hold.
claire rousay shares her latest single, “somewhat burdensome”, a masterclass in textural sound design, weaving together shimmering piano and guitar melodies with ambient drones and intimate field recordings. Watch the accompanying visual piece she constructed that mirrors the album’s focus on recordings captured at dusk.
Japanese artist Nobukazu Takemura has shared “an ephemeral radiant,” a new single from his upcoming album, knot of meanings, due September 26th. The track captures Takemura’s singular blend of electro-acoustic instrumentation with sublime, understated arrangements. Steady piano figures are dappled with melodic motifs from cello synth, plinking electronics, and a trilling vibraphone, alluding to sparks flying from struck stones.
Matmos evidently revel in the spark that comes from intense collaboration. It’s a spark that has remained alight for nearly thirty years and shows no sign of dimming. Metallic Life Review is, above all else, a masterly repositioning of music into the realm of physical substance, where the inanimate becomes animate, and metal’s perceived harshness and coldness is alchemised into warmth and humanity. There’s something magical about that.
Electronic duo Matmos have released “Steel Tongues,” the latest single from their upcoming album, Metallic Life Review. The track, built from the sounds of a metallic salad bowl, glockenspiel, and even American quarters, offers a deceptively sweet melody that explores darker themes of capitalism and mortality. It’s a prime example of the band’s sculptural and conceptually rich approach to electronic music.
Taken from her new album, Second Circle The Horizon, listen to Sally Anne Morgan’s latest single ‘Eye is the First’ – a rustling journey featuring a repeated slow guitar appregios and a more narrative-sounding banjo with organic sounding shimmering rustles conjuring the gentle movement of a breeze. While meditative, it also joyously reveals Morgan’s deep bond with nature and how she intuitively interweaves this into her creations.
Those who heard our latest Monday Morning Brew playlist (No. 103) would have heard The Rust Belt, the latest single from Matmos (Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt). The accompanying video, animated by artist Jack Colbert, celebrates the myriad eclectic materials used to make the new Matmos album, Metallic Life Review, animating pocket-sized metallic objects that Colbert sourced from metal detecting.