30th May 2012: v/a Oh Michael, Look What You've Done : Friends Play Michael Chapman / Interview with Josh Rosenthal (Tompkins Square) / Playlist

Featured: v/a Oh Michael, Look What You've Done : Friends Play Michael Chapman (Tompkins Square)

Michael Chapman began his career on the Cornish folk circuit in 1967. Signed to the Harvest label, home to Pink Floyd and Deep Purple, he recorded four quasi-legendary albums. The influential 'Fully Qualified Survivor' was John Peel's favorite record of 1970, and featured future Bowie collaborator Mick Ronson. After decades of recording and touring, Chapman remained an obscure figure in the States until his profile was raised by a lengthy 2009 interview with big fan Thurston Moore in Fretboard Journal.

He toured extensively with the late guitarist Jack Rose, and more recently, with Bill Callahan. Seattle-based indie label Light in the Attic began a reissue campaign of his Harvest work, and Tompkins Square released the internationally acclaimed double disc, 'Trainsong : Guitar Compositions, 1967-2010'.

All this has brought newfound attention to a singular guitarist and songwriter.

'Oh Michael, Look What You've Done : Friends Play Michael Chapman', compiled by Michael's wife Andru and Tompkins Square's Josh Rosenthal, features artists who have shared a stage with Michael, or share a personal connection. These include some of his contemporaries like Bridget St. John, Maddy Prior, and longtime cohort Rick Kemp (Steeleye Span), as well as young guns inspired by Michael's legacy.

Tompkins Square

Radio Playlist 30th May 2012 (HERE)


John Fahey - In Christ There Is No East Or West ['Night Ride' BBC - May 28, 1969]
Jack Rose - Sunflower River Blues [Kensington Blues]
Michael Chapman - So Young / Fahey's Flag [Live on KEXP Seattle, WA - June 22, 2011]
**
Meg Baird - No Song To Sing [v/a Oh Michael, Look What You've Done: Friends Sing Michael Chapman]
Michael Chapman - Slowcoach [Words Fail Me Vols.1 & 2]
Lucinda Williams - That Time Of Night [v/a Oh Michael, Look What You've Done: Friends Sing Michael Chapman]
**
Max Ochs - Imaginational Anthem (1969) [Tompkins Square/Fonotone 7"]
Max Ochs - Ain't Nobody High Raga [Hooray For Another Day]
John Fahey - Oh Holy Night [v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol.1]
Jack Rose - Crossing The North Fork II [v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol.2]
Michael Chapman - Leaving The Apple [v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol.2]
Son House - Dry Spell Blues [v/a People Take Warning]
Charlie Patton - Mississippi Boll Weevil [v/a People Take Warning]
Michael Chapman - Caddo Lake [Words Fail Me Vols.1 & 2]
Max Ochs - Imaginational Anthem (2004) [v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol.1]
**
Mark Fosson - Wind Through A Broken Glass [The Lost Takoma Sessions]
Ben Reynolds - Here Toucheth Blues (#) [v/a Imaginational Anthem Vol.1]
Hiss Golden Messenger - Fennario [v/a Oh Michael, Look What You've Done: Friends Sing Michael Chapman]

23rd May 2012: Gravenhurst / Underlights in Session / Playlist

Featured: Gravenhurst - Ghost In Daylight (Warp)

Gravenhurst is the work of songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Nick Talbot from Bristol, England. The Ghost In Daylight is his most sonically diverse work yet, building upon his brand of ambient noise-folk with starkly acoustic songs resting alongside densely layered pieces.

The album's lead single ''The Prize'' is a dark meditation on recurring Gravenhurst themes of compulsion, degradation and the possibility of transcendence, and contains some of Nick's finest lyrics to date. Conjured from disparate ingredients, Gravenhurst's roots lie in the melodic noise of My Bloody Valentine, the lush vocal harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel, the alchemical guitars of Richard Thompson and Johnny Marr, and the widescreen ambient visions of Brian Eno.

"So what’s the album like? I went back to my old way of using different guitar tunings to come up with new ideas, listening to lots of Richard Thompson and Brian Eno, writing song structures on the guitar, while carving out a sonic space for them by manipulating organs, optigans, mellotrons and synthesizers. I find the divine in drone, dissonance and noise so there is a near-religious amount of controlled chaos beneath the close harmonies and finger-picked guitars. So this album is at once deep in acoustics and heavy in electricity; an emergent contrapuntal sonic phenomenon occupying four to five-dimensional phase-space. It’s a bi-limbic, stereotactic sub-caudate trachtotomy of an album and it’s a real pleasure to finally be able to present it to people who have been waiting so patiently for it for so long." Nick Talbot

Gravenhurst

Underlights - Live in Session

Underlights

Radio Playlist 23rd May 2012 (HERE)

Children Of The Wave - I Defy You [album advance]
Lightships - Silver & Gold [Electric Cables]
Gravenhurst - Circadian [The Ghost In Daylight]
**
My Best Fiend - One Velvet Day [In Ghostlike Fading]
Fuxa - Hideaway [Supercharged]
The Vorticists - Cannonball [Show]
**
Gravenhurst - The Prize [The Ghost In Daylight]
Black Springs - Sunrise [demo]
The Early Days - My Way [S/T]
**
Underlights - Now That You're In Love [EP]
Underlights - Violent Day [Live on Sideways Through Sound]
Underlights - Remnants [Live on Sideways Through Sound]
**
Matt Bailey - Bernadette [Book Of Illumination]
Dungen - Min Enda Van [Daytrotter Sessions: Big Orange Studios - April 27, 2012]Gravenhurst - The Foundry [The Ghost In Daylight]
**
Johnny Took - Honey I Get Bored [Built For Destruction EP]

16th May 2012: Marissa Nadler / Playlist

Featured: Marissa Nadler - The Sister (Box Of Cedar Records)

“Heartbreak is a great muse, but it can wear you down,” says Marissa Nadler, referring to the stormy relationships that haunted many of the heavenly hooks on her last couple records. “For The Sister, I realized I had muses all around me, whether it was childhood, betrayal, friendships, new love, nature, or hope. The narrator’s stronger in my songs now, and more able to bounce back if they choose to.”

While that may be true, the deeply personal characters in Nadler’s eight new songs—a filler-free collection that’s subtly linked to last year’s self-titled LP—are as complex as ever, from the codeine-clouded memories of the rock ‘n’ roll singer in “Constantine” to the downward spiral diatribes of the lost soul in “Christine.” And then there are the introspective turning points where the clouds part, where metaphorical wrecking balls burst through cement-clogged hearts and slivers of light slip through the cracks.

Meanwhile, the singer/guitarist keeps her confessionals as intimate as possible and hits her stride sonically, playing lead on every last song and letting only the slightest distractions—a skittish drum set, a punch-drunk chorus, a muggy mandolin—break the album’s brutally honest spell. Or as Nadler puts it, “I wanted the starkness of every song to reflect the lyrical content. Some of my biggest influences are confessional songwriters. It’s always been a very powerful thing to listen to Elliott Smith and Joni Mitchell, and feel so much from their stories.”

Marissa Nadler

Radio Playlist 16th May 2012 (HERE)

James Yorkston & The Athletes - Sweet Jesus [Moving Up Country {10th Anniversary Edition}]

Gareth Dickson - Noon [Quite A Way Away]

Marissa Nadler - Your Heart Is A Twisted Vine [The Sister]

**

Jennifer Castle - Powers [Castlemusic]

Mazzy Star - Wasted [So Tonight That I Might See]

The Heavy Eyes - These Men Are Wolves [2]

**

Marissa Nadler - The Wrecking Ball Company [The Sister]

Patrick Watson - Morning Sheets [Adventures In Your Own Backyard]

The Goner - Hello Friend, Today I Will Sing Beautifully For You [7"]

**

Marissa Nadler - Love Again There Is A Fire [The Sister]

Devotional - Dream With Me [7"]

Caitlin Rose - Coming Up [Own Side Now]

**

Lucie Thorne - Whatever Floats [v/a Take Something Beautiful: The Songs Of Jesse Younan]

Peter Broderick - Blue [http://www.isithear.com]

Marissa Nadler - Constantine [The Sister]

**

Brad Barr - Bouba's Bounce [The Fall Apartment: Instrumental Guitar]

9th May 2012: Father John Misty / Playlist

Featured: Father John Misty - Fear Fun (Sub Pop)

Father John Misty – the moniker of former Fleet Foxes’ drummer J Tillman, has announced the release of a new album, ‘Fear Fun’. Produced by Fleet Foxes’ producer Phil Ek (who has also worked with Band of Horses and Modest Mouse), ‘Fear Fun’ has already spawned key single “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”, of which the video features comedienne Aubrey Plaza.

When discussing ‘Father John Misty’, Tillman paraphrases Philip Roth: “It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you won’t get it’. What I call it is totally arbitrary, but I like the name. You’ve got to have a name. I never got to choose mine."

He goes on, “‘People who make records are afforded this assumption by the culture that their music is coming from an exclusively personal place, but more often than not what you hear are actually the affectations of an ’alter-ego’ or a cartoon of an emotionally heightened persona,” says Josh Tillman, who has been recording/releasing solo albums since 2003 and who recently left Seattle’s Fleet Foxes after playing drums from 2008-2011. “That kind of emotional quotient isn’t sustainable if your concern is portraying a human-being made up of more than just chest-beating pathos. I see a lot of rampant, sexless, male-fantasy everywhere in the music around me. I didn’t want any alter-egos, any vagaries, fantasy, escapism, any over-wrought sentimentality. I like humor and sex and mischief. So when you think about it, it’s kind of mischievous to write about yourself in a plain-spoken, kind of explicitly obvious way and call it something like ‘Misty’. I mean, I may as well have called it ‘Steve’”.

Musically, Fear Fun consists of such disparate elements as Waylon Jennings, Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, “All Things Must Pass,” and “Physical Graffiti,” often within the same song. Tillman’s voice has never been better and often sounds like Roy Orbison, “The Caruso of Rock”, at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark, mysterious and yet conversely playful, almost Dionysian quality. Lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit, in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of Bukowski or Brautigan, the hedonist-philosophy of Oscar Wilde and the dried-out wit of Loudon Wainwright III.

Father John Misty

Playlist 9th May 2012 (HERE)


Cian Nugent - My War Blues [VHF 7”]
The Falls - Home [Hollywood EP]
Father John Misty - I’m Writing A Novel [Fear Fun]
**
Poor Moon - Illusion [Illusion EP]
Rusty Bear - Hollow Bird [Source To Sea]
Hollow Mirrors - Amber Eyes [S/T]
**
Father John Misty - Funtimes In Babylon [Fear Fun]
Helicon - Panic, Everything Is OK [Drinking Of You EP]
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Panic In Babylon [Aufheben]
**
J. Tillman - My Proud Mountains [v/a Introducing Townes Van Zandt Via The Great Unknown]
Dawes - My Way Back Home [Nothing Is Wrong]
Father John Misty - This Is Sally Hatchet [Fear Fun]
**
Cave Country - Hard To Love [Just A Little Coal EP]
Melodie Nelson - Six Six Six {feat. Geoffrey O'Connor} [ 7”]
Jonathan Wilson - Morning Tree [B-Sides]