New Releases
amelia courthouse -
broken things
On her first album since ruby glass (SPINSTER, 2019), sound artist and composer amelia courthouse (aka Leah Toth) builds on her previous album’s textures, moods, and evocations of memory, adding bold new colors to construct her singular “hymnambient” music.
West of Roan -
Queen of Eyes
The original songs on Queen of Eyes—which are rooted in ancient archetypes and draw from the wellspring of traditional music and all of its humanity, emotion, and history—are a deeply resonant balm for a fractured culture, a bridge across the void, a solace for listener and singer alike.
V/A - Measure, Pour & Mixtape: Music for Cooking
The compilation includes a benediction to be sung before a meal by BELLS (Kandice Holmes), a layered sound collage “Tabbouleh” by Avey Tare of Animal Collective, and original food odes by the likes of Lou Turner, Sally Anne Morgan, and legendary folk musician Michael Hurley. Together, all of the tracks—or ingredients, if you will—deepened and expanded our original vision, mixing, cooking, and baking together in a hearty, warm, and inventive aural menu for the most nourishing of communal meals.
On their transformative debut album Nakshatra, violinists Trina Basu and Arun Ramamurthy reach both deep into their past and high into the celestial realm, culminating in a lush and spiritual collaboration that bridges traditions and defies genres. Deeply rooted in traditions of South Indian classical music, Western chamber music, and jazz, Basu and Ramamurthy create a sound that feels ancient, orchestral, and contemporary or as The New Yorker put it, “free-flowing and globe-spanning.”
“The Nashville-based singer-songwriter has delivered an album that solidifies her status as a modern master. Each song here is a finely crafted gem, subtle and purposeful, revealing complex layers without ever sacrificing a ramble-y rootsy simplicity in the music.” -Tyler Wilcox, Aquarium Drunkard
All Releases
Taking their name from a children’s fantasy novel, Doran is a four-person freak folk collective hailing from rural Virginia, New York City, and the Pacific Northwest. Together, singer and banjo-player Elizabeth LaPrelle (Anna & Elizabeth), multi-media performance artists and musicians Channing Showalter and Annie Schermer (West of Roan), and songwriter and producer Brian Dolphin draw from their respective work in story, song, archetype and image, and advance it into an untapped experimental terrain that is newly raw, wintry, moody, and tender.
While the collection of songs on Philly/Michigan musician Rosali’s electrifying third LP, No Medium, explores the often dark territory of loss, death, sexuality, self-sabotage, and addiction, there is a surprising lightness to its sonic being. Backed by members of the David Nance Group, Rosali (Long Hots, Wandering Shade, Monocot) wades through the emotional mire with infectious, earworm melodies led by her luminous voice.
With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the predominantly white male canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century. So too is her stunning sophomore release, Urban Driftwood, an album for and of these times. Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020, illustrating both a personal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams’ evocative, lyrical compositions.
“Some kind of low-key masterpiece” -Tyler Wilcox, Aquarium Drunkard
“Lou Turner is one of the most promising indie rock songwriters in Nashville right now to my ears…this is one of my favorite new discoveries." -Ann K. Powers, NPR World Cafe
"Slut Pill is a wild-ass concoction of anti-patriarchal snot, twanged-out bop, and sparkle-eyed wit, the dope-smoking satirists of the hippest holler in the East Kentucky coalfield." -Lee Bains III
"The five pieces on this album vary in degrees of abstraction and figurative-ness, but even the most song-like of them, “Becker,” which weaves in threads of “I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger,” feels less like a song and more like a visitation from the ghost of a song. And yet, they are so beautiful, these tremulous meditations on tone and decay. They ripple out like water (there is recorded water in a couple of them), finding a calm, ruminative space between motion and stillness." - Jennifer Kelly, Dusted
The tracks on Quilt of the Universe share these crossed impulses—to blast terrestrial expression into the cosmos, and translate galactic information into an earthly object. The featured artists, which include Ami Dang, Marisa Anderson, and Precious Bryant, piece together direct messages and less apparent textural meanings: the topical content of a song like a discernible patchwork pattern, the timbre of a singer’s voice like the spacing of an embroiderer’s stitches, the arrangement of instruments as appliquéd fabric, the sonic layering as wool batting and cotton bound with silk thread.
"…verdant, contemplative rock songs whose soft exteriors conceal a steely core of cool observations about heartache and vulnerability." -Allison Hussey, Pitchfork
"It's the kind of record best heard in the winding narrative of night, as casual conversations and cheap bottles of wine gradually turn deeper, darker notes." -Lars Gotrich, NPR Music