Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is a multi-instrumentalist, member of several bands and co-founder of the Root Strata record label based out of San Francisco, California. Cantu-Ledesma got his start in the band Tarentel. He was one of the founding members and is still a primary figure in the band's line-up. In addition, Cantu-Ledesma is, and has been, involved in a slew of other musical projects. His label, Root Strata, is highly regarded by the drone/ambient music community and has an extensive catalog that includes artists such as Tarentel, Grouper, Yellow Swans, Charalambides, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Oneohtrix Point Never, Barn Owl, Starving Weirdos, Gregg Kowalsky, and more.
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is a multi-instrumentalist, member of several bands and co-founder of the Root Strata record label based out of San Francisco, California. Cantu-Ledesma got his start in the band Tarentel. He was one of the founding members and is still a primary figure in the band's line-up. In addition, Cantu-Ledesma is, and has been, involved in a slew of other musical projects. His label, Root Strata, is highly regarded by the drone/ambient music community and has an extensive catalog that includes artists such as Tarentel, Grouper, Yellow Swans, Charalambides, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Oneohtrix Point Never, Barn Owl, Starving Weirdos, Gregg Kowalsky, and more.
Un hiver en plein été
From its earliest utterances, experimental music has been particularly disposed to transnational and cross-cultural collaboration. Seeking the answer for a fundamental problem - how to transcend the boundaries of difference, distance, and time - it presents a means to find common ground and communicate through the elemental form of sound. Over the last 5 years, this precisely what the duo of Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has achieved, intertwining sublime sonorities across the geographi…
You Can See Your Own Way Out
** Edition of 500, Clear Vinyl, Gloss Laminate Sleeve ** You Can See Your Own Way Out is the first collaborative record between Ilyas Ahmed and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Long-time friends and satellites orbiting the same communities and scenes, You Can See's inception was never really a question of if, but when. Combining Ahmed's explorative guitar/synth-work and Cantu-Ledesma's field recording, sound processing and electronics, the result presents as a book of short stories or vignettes highlighting…
Love Is A Stream
**Edition of 300. 10 year anniversary edition. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu. Design by Farbod Kokabi.** From the original press release: As a member of San Francisco legends Tarentel and Type’s premier astral travellers The Alps, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is hardly a new addition to the label, so it’s hard to believe that ‘Love Is A Stream’ is his first Type solo album. Previously releasing on Arbor, Spekk and his own Root Strata imprint, this latest album marks his journey into the beautifully cacop…
Tracing Back the Radiance
Some records aren’t as simple as they seem. Most are capsules of beauty and creative vision, or sublime objects of expression which occupy the abstract realms. But the rare few are also discrete philosophies, realized in sound - a truth brought to the forefront by Mexican Summer veteran, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s, latest venture, Tracing Back the Radiance. A radical departure from pop drenched melodies which have defined his recent efforts, its experimental forms offer a dynamic rethinking of the t…
Limpid as the Solitude
Dreamlike second collaboration between Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, a deeply affecting play of contrasting textures, densities and space that comes very highly recommended if you’re into Ryuichi Sakamoto’s collaborations with Alva Noto, La Monte Young, GRM’s 1970’s output, classic 4AD/Cocteau Twins, that incredible Autechre remix of Tortoise, or indeed Félicia Atkinson's scene stealing Hand In Hand album from last year...‘Limpid as the Solitudes’ is the steeply immersive second coll…
Fragments Of A Season
Emotional Response continues it’s fifth year celebrations in welcoming two of the label’s long held favourite artists – Jefre Cantu–Ledesma and Alexis Georgopoulos – coming together perfectly for an album of laconic story-telling and atmospherics. Over the past decade, Cantu–Ledesma and Georgopoulos have been frequent collaborators. With one another – Jefre’s recent "On The Echoing Green’ (Mexican Summer), Arp’s “The Soft Wave” (Smalltown Supersound) and The Alps “Le Voyage” (Type) – an…
Songs Of Forgiveness
Originally released in the summer of 2014 as a cassette by Baro Recordings, Songs Of Forgiveness is now available for the first time on LP in a limited edition of 500 copies via the New York imprint Pre-Echo. Composed by Cantu-Ledesma during his first winter after relocating to Brooklyn, NY, this suite of six discrete tracks are formed by colliding micro orbits of guitar, drum machine, and synth, all purposefully phasing in and out of sync, and painted with chords of ecstatic melancholica…
Songs of Remembrance
Originally released in the summer of 2014 as a cassette by Psychic Troubles, Songs Of Remembrance is now available for the first time on LP in a limited edition of 500 copies via the New York imprint Pre-Echo. Compiled from recordings spanning two years and various locations, the 21 tracks on Songs Of Remembrance act as snapshots of various times and places, cover a wide range of sonic ground, and call to mind any number of imagined spaces via drum machine, guitar, synth and tape explorat…
Comme Un Seul Narcisse
French artist Félicia Atkinson teams up with New York-based experimentalist Jefre Cantu-Ledesma for Comme Un Seul Narcisse, their first collaborative effort. Recorded between NYC and the Alps, Comme Un Seul Narcisse is an epistolary conversation of postmodern times between Cantu-Ledesma and Atkinson, who -- strangely enough -- met just once in person, in San Francisco in 2009. But the record is also a detour. Though it follows Cantu-Ledesma's haunting A Year With 13 Moons (Mexican Summer, 201…
A Year With 13 Moons
A master of romantic abstraction, Jefre Cantu–Ledesma is not new to the scene. In fact, he’s been releasing a steady stream of music for nearly twenty years. With the brilliant album A Year With 13 Moons, however, the ever–prolific Ledesma appears to be hitting a new high. Or low, depending on how you like to see things. More on that later. First, some background. Born & raised in Texas, Ledesma’s formative artistic years were spent studying painting & sculpture in San Francisco. He bega…
Requiem
**One-sided canary yellow vinyl with screen-print to rear. Individually hand-numbered edition of 300 with photo, insert and download code redeemable from the label. Mastered by Rashad at D&M** Berlin publishing house, Infinite Greyscale present a beautiful 2nd issue courtesy of West Coast sorrow-monger, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma of Tarentel and The Alps. In key with their other releases this week - a 10" by former Yellow Swan, Gabriel Saloman, the heavy-hearted 'Requiem (for violin and magnetic…
Shining Skull Breath
This ultra limited, and long out of print cd-r from 2007, finally available again, now as a super swank (and still quite limited) lp...Another gorgeous sonic transmission from right here in the Bay Area, from AQ fave Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the man behind Tarentel, and the Root Strata label. Those familiar with Cantu-Ledesma's music know that he usually speakers in hushed whispers, breathy and breathless, soft sonic shimmers allowed to drift like billowy clouds into your ears. But here, C-L …