24th November 2010: Charlie Parr & The Black Twig Pickers / Playlist

Featured: Charlie Parr & The Black Twig Pickers - Glory In The Meeting House (House Of Mercy)

At the end of May in 2010, Charlie Parr and the Black Twig Pickers holed themselves up in a shed in rural Ironto, Virginia and recorded the album that would become 'Glory in the Meeting House'. Part country, part gospel and completely old-time, this session sounds ancient and new simultaneously. Parr’s haunting and gritty vocals combines with the fiddling, strumming and plucking of the Black Twig Pickers to bring the listener right into the shed with them.

Charlie Parr plays original and traditional folk and Piedmont-style blues, accompanying himself on National resonator guitars, 12-string guitar and sometimes a banjo. Based in Duluth, Minnesota, Charlie has played all over the USA and Europe and Australia and released six acclaimed albums.

The Black Twig Pickers got their start in a dark alley between the campers at the 1999 Galax Old Fiddlers Convention, choosing their name from an archaic apple variety in founding fiddler Ralph Berrier Jr.'s family orchard. Since then, the Black Twig Pickers' fiddle-banjo-guitar-washboard sound has been heard in dives, barns, streets and dances from Amsterdam to Atlanta, yet remains solidly rooted in a corner of Southwest Virginia where four other states are closer than the Virginia capital.

Charlie Parr

Radio Playlist November 2010

Madelaine Hart - Travelling Blind (Demo)
Sam Lewis - Hard To Find (Everything You Are)
Charlie Parr & BTP -I Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down (Glory In The Meeting House)
**
We Are Willow - Board The Train (Part 2)
Micah P. Hinson & The Pioneer Saboteurs - Watchers, Tell Us Of The Night (S/T)
Of Monsters & Men - From Finner (Demo)
**
Charlie Parr & BTP - What A Friend We Have (Glory In The Meeting House)
Cave Country - Constant Arrival (S/T)
Larches - So It Goes (Nurses Speak In Code EP)
**
Nick Jonah Davis - The Beasts Below (Guitar Recordings Vol.1)
Dylan LeBlanc - If The Creek Don't Rise (Paupers Field)
Charlie Parr & BTP - Death's Black Train (Glory In The Meeting House)
**
R.M. Hubbert - Jumphang (First & Last)
L.W. Major - Ghost Ships On Sunlit Seas (Where The Sun Hits The Trains)
Larches - Forever Yes (Nurses Speak In Code EP)
**
Phil Davies & The Ninjasmokebombs - Slow Motion Riot (EP)
White Pines - Departing (The Falls)

17th November 2010: John Fairhurst / Larches / Playlist

Featured: John Fairhurst - Band (Debt)

Acclaimed guitarist and Siodfeways Through Sound regular and favourite John Fairhurst releases his much anticipated second record on October 18 through Debt Records and we are honoured to feature John's exceptional brand new release.

Laid down in a small German analogue studio with a group of international musicians assembled specially for the event, 'Band' takes inspiration from the extensive touring John has done since his last album came out - a journey that took him to SXSW in Texas, the UK festival circuit, a three month tour of Australia (including a live session on Sideways Through Sound) and the Far East as well as continual Europe-wide performances.

Fairhurst’s debut Joys Of Spring (2007) was an instrumental album that daringly fused Indian Classical guitar trends with the raggedy American blues licks of the early nineteen hundreds. Its limited run of 1000 copies sold out almost immediately and the critical response propelled its author onto a world tour that still continues today. Later the record even secured John endorsement from legendary US guitar manufacturers National and an apprenticeship with Sarod Maestro K. Sridhar.

Its follow-up 'Band', however, could not be more different. This latest release transports John Fairhurst’s singular blues fusion style (with newly acquired fearsome singing voice) boldly onto the dance floor. Indeed, whilst his first collection of songs exhibited an artistry that compelled audiences to sit forward in their seats and marvel, the dominant message of 'Band' is undoubtedly “Get on your feet!”

John Fairhurst

Larches

Radio Playlist 17th November 2010

Larches - By The Sea (Nurses Speak In Code EP)
Kaki King - My Nerves That Committed Suicide (Junior)
John Fairhurst - Earworm (Band)
**
The Morals - It's Complicated (Demo)
Rozi Plain - Good Good Light (v/a Outer Circle)
Jay Fraser - The Price On My Head (Orpheus Sessions)
**
John Fairhurst - Pay Day (Band)
Nick Schillace - Requiem For John Eric Bradley (Box Canyon)
Larches - There's Nothing I Don't Owe You (Nurses Speak In Code EP)
**
Oh Ruin - The Pillow Where Your Head Does Lay (Static Caravan 7")
Reverend Deadeye - Chased Ol' Satan (The Trials & Tribulations Of...)
John Fairhurst - Daylight (Band)
**
Charlie Parr & The Black Twig Pickers - Where You Gonna Be (when the good Lord calls you home?) (GPS 7")
Jack Rose with D. Charles Speer & The Helix - Linden Avenue Stomp (Ragged & Right)
Jez Mead - Town's Too Small (Beard Of Bees)
**
John Fairhurst - Earworm (Band)

10th November 2010: v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol.4 / Playlist

Featured: v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol. 4 (Tompkins Square)

Since the first volume in 2005, Tompkins Square’s ‘Imaginational Anthem’ series has introduced many new acoustic guitarists and unearthed many forgotten legends of the American Primitive genre.

Volume 4 strays from the formula slightly by focusing on the present generation of guitar pickers, representing American and English musical traditions.

The stunning gatefold LP (limited edition of 500) and CD are created by Paul Romano, best known for his incredible designs for Mastodon.

“Simply put, these are all essential recordings, they offer solid evidence of how the tradition continues from the ’60s to the present day in the same way that albums by Fahey, Kottke, Crandell, Lang, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, and countless others picked up on the lineages of the previous decades from folk, blues, prison songs and mountain and church music foundations, and brought it forth, shifted and changed and added and subtracted. This box is the latest entry in the long long logbook. Get it.” – 4.5 / 5 stars, All Music Guide

“Taken as a whole, these three albums provide a comprehensive overview of the ongoing American Primitive movement, and will likely provide a large enough reservoir to tide you over handsomely should that acoustic guitar drought ever come.” – Pitchfork

Tompkins Square

Radio Playlist 10th November 2010

Matt Corby - Coloured Stones & Walls (Transition To Colour EP)
Grun - A UFO Stole My Sealion (Greenland)
Nick Jonah Davis - San Cristobal De Las Casas (v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol. 4)
**
Anna Myrsten - Come & Sit (Demo)
Broken Records - The Motorcycle Boy Reigns (Let Me Come Home)
Fleet Foxes - Mykonos (Sun Giant EP)
**
William Tyler - Between Radnor & Sunrise (v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol. 4)
Pollyanna - Lokken (On Concrete)
Magic Greenery - Flying (Demo)
**
Junip - Tide (Fields)
J. Tillman - No Occasion (Vacilando Territory Blues)
Boy & Bear - The Storm (With Emperor Antarctica)
**
Tyler Ramsey - Our Home Beyond The River (v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol. 4)
Dollboy Meets Sone Institute - Sunshine (The Sum & The Difference)
Cloud Control - Meditation Song #2 (why, oh why) (Bliss Relase)
**
The Miserable Rich - Monkey (Twelve Ways To Count)

3rd November 2010: Wolf People / Playlist

Featured: Wolf People - Steeple (Jagjaguwar)

'Steeple' is the first album proper from Wolf People and represents the emergence of a fully fledged band from the fragmented, haunted bedroom meanderings of their Tidings singles compilation.

Without doubt, 'Steeple' takes on a heavier sound, but maintains the arabesque electric guitars, groove-laden drums and ethereal vocals that characterized its predecessor.

'Steeple' is a powerful record that wears its many influences on its sleeve, most of them from the '60s and all of them English. What keeps this record from slipping into mere mimicry is the way the group cherry-picks the choicest attributes from the bands they love and re-packages them as a perfect, crystalline example of their ideal sound.

Wolf People

Radio Playlist 3rd November 2010

Jason Simon - The Dust Does Blow (S/T)
The Lovetones - Hurricane (Lost)
Wolf People - Silbury Sands (Steeple)
**
Sharon Van Etten - A Crime (Epic)
Chief - Summer's Day (Modern Rituals)
Good Old War - Get Some (S/T)
**
Wolf People - One By One From Dorney Reach (Steeple)
Darker My Love - 18th Street Shuffle (Alive As You Are)
Sunray - Baby Honey (Baby Honey EP)
**
The Morning Benders - Pleasure Sighs (Big Echo)
Pond - Torn Asunder (Frond)
Wolf People - Banks Of Sweet Dundee Pt.1 & 2 (Steeple)
**
The Wraiths - Touch Of A Vanished Hand (Welcome, Stranger, To This Place)
Adam Cole & Neil Sweeney - Goodbye Joseph Merrick, Goodbye 21st Century Blues (Tales Of Lucifer Mosquito Part One)

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Sideways Through Sound Archive


25th November 2009: Gareth Dickson
18th November 2009: This Frontier Needs Heroes
11th November 2009: The Black Ryder
4th November 2009: Telling The Bees
**
24th November 2008: The Sun Blindness
17th November 2008: Timbreland Recordings
10th November 2008: California Special
3rd November 2008: Dame Satan
**
29th November 2007: Smoke Fairies
22nd November 2007: Wooden Shjips
15th November 2007: Grizzly Bear
8th November 2007: Coach Fingers
1st November 2007: Samara Lubelski