★Preservation

The Preservation label presents Burnt Offerings, the fourth album from Brooklyn's Padna. As Padna, Nat Hawks initially made his name in the cassette underground on the revered Stunned label with two works of pop experimentalism displaying a bustling -- often boggling -- and vivid imagination. Veritable joyrides in sound and style, these releases were in line with the DIY aesthetic, primitive songcraft and eclectic sonic stew pioneered by the likes of Tall Dwarfs and forwarded by Olivia Tremo…

The Preservation label presents Home, the third album from Olan Mill from Hampshire in the United Kingdom. Olan Mill is the recording project of composer and producer Alex Smalley, who to-date has received rapturous acclaim for his work that holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience. On Home, Smalley has mined his most expansive territory yet to create a thrillingly evocative and deeply felt body of work. The tender clusters of sound that ha…

The Preservation label presents Slay Me in My Sleep, the sixth album from Melbourne's Grand Salvo. Under the guise of Grand Salvo, Paddy Mann has established himself as a songwriter of unique heart and soul with a depth of lyricism matched by warm but widescreen musical vision. 2009's Soil Creatures sealed his reputation, being his most stark and concise statement yet. With Slay Me in My Sleep, Mann has returned to familiar territory, writing a parable as song cycle similar to his epic fairytale…

The Preservation label presents Body Moving Slowly, the second full-length album from California's Mirror To Mirror. Mirror To Mirror is Los Angeles resident Alex Twomey, who has quietly developed a raft of stunning pieces across several low-key works on his own Jugular Forest label, many approaching a ballad-like form in their beauty. His collaboration with Matthew Sullivan (Earn), 1958-2009, became one of the more highly talked-about projects of the past two years, one outing named as NPR's "B…

The Preservation label presents The Baroque Atrium, the second full-length album from Seattle's Panabrite. Panabrite is the solo recording project for Norm Chambers, who over a short time has grown a catalog of works showcasing a natural empathy for tapestries of sound that are eclectic, intricate and immediate all at once. Marking new ground in pursuit of pre-digital synthesis, Chambers' work as Panabrite is a shining light among those currently finding inspiration connecting sound explora…

The Preservation label presents Grandfather Harmonic, the new full-length album from Sparkling Wide Pressure. The alter ego of Murfreesboro, Tennessee's Frank Baugh, Sparkling Wide Pressure has drawn from a seemingly infinite well of sonic inspiration to record at an incredible rate since 2008, having his work appear on labels such as Digitalis, Stunned, Housecraft and Students Of Decay. This transfixing entry into his weighty catalog pinpoints Baugh's increasing fascination with song-forms…

The Preservation label presents the fourth album from Sydney's Seaworthy. Seaworthy is the musical guise of Cameron Webb, who, for the best part of a decade, has developed singular soundscapes scored with guitar-driven ambience, field recording and digital processing. In recent years, Webb has recorded to acclaim for the esteemed 12K label, releasing the 1897 album in 2009 followed by a collaboration with Matt Rösner, Two Lakes. His compositions reflect his deep connection to environment an…

Early Songs is the work of Glaswegian David Scott. It’s been less than five years since David starting writing music, but he’s been playing guitar for nearly 15 after hearing his first musical inspiration in the lyrical country-blues of fingerpicker Mississippi John Hurt. The second turning point for David’s work came after hearing the violin playing of The Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis. The instrumental trio prompted him to leave singing behind, pick up the fiddle and create emotive instrum…

Preservation's latest captures Italian experimentalist, Fabio Orsi in hungry, visceral form. Joined by Rich Baker's original drum loops, Fabio plays guitar, keyboards, voice and effects on eight relatively short, one might even say poppy, rock postures within an immersive ambient sound sphere. Considering that he's best known for lushly textured drone and ambient works 'Stand Before Me, Oh My Soul' is a hugely confident sideways shift into a new realm of more aggressive sonics with a def…

The Preservation label presents Map of Circular Thought from Providence, Rhode Island’s Area C. Area C is the music project for composer and multi-media artist Erik Carlson. Carlson has recently completed the soundtrack to a National Geographic documentary on New Orleans in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and has worked on several projects for NASA’s Space Grant Consortium along with numerous audio, multi-media and public art installations. Map of Circular Thought follows severa…

The Preservation label presents the reissue edition of Marking Time from UK artist Richard Skelton. Richard has recorded in various guises -- as Clouwbeck, Heidika, Carousell and A Broken Consort. Marking Time was his first work released under his own name, and also the first on a label other than his own, Sustain-Release. Through the prolific output on Sustain-Release, Richard stamped a singular vision with his music: a sound that is at once complex and elemental in its questing nature, cor…

2011 release ** "Black Eagle Child has the uncanny ability to marry pastoral post-folk – high humidity front porch rambles to sparse and exploratory arpeggios that are thick with pathos and tinged with nostalgia for the disappearing horizon of definable memories – and soaring guitar lines that ascend above the field recordings and layers of looped acoustic and electric guitars. Lobelia creates emotional landscapes of great loss combined with those flying dreams that we have where we are soaring …

The Preservation label presents the second album from New York's Nickolas Mohanna. Also working as a visual artist, Nickolas draws unique forms from the wealth of sounds found in New York's complex sprawl and imbues them with feeling and subtlety. The sounds on Reflectors buzz with rich detail and rhythmic interplay for a work alive with beauty and mystery in its atmospheric reach. Previously living in San Francisco for a number of years, Nickolas studied with noted electronic composer Bob…

The Preservation label presents Light Poured Out Of Our Bones, the debut for the pairing of Aaron Martin and Justin Wright. Aaron Martin is a multi-instrumentalist who has previously recorded three acclaimed albums on Preservation; Almond, River Water and Chautauqua. He has developed an idiosyncratic, singular and engaging style with his electro-acoustic compositions tracing an arc for a new kind of Americana steeped in cinematic ambience and alien wonder. Justin Wright is better known as Exp…

Becalmed is the debut album from Sydney pianist Sophie Hutchings, recorded between two different settings: one with engineer Tim Whitten, best known for his work with The Necks, and one with Tony Dupe, who records on the preservation label as Saddleback. Becalmed isn't an entirely solo affair, and you'll hear Hutchings' family and friends helping her out with violin, cello and percussion - all elements that greatly help bring these recordings to life. Beautifully recorded, elegiac and romantic c…

The Preservation label presents From The Ground, the debut album from Portland, Oregon’s Heather Woods Broderick. Growing up in the relative quiet of the Maine countryside while learning a range of instruments and being sung to sleep by her parents playing folk songs, natural and rural sounds became central to Heather’s sense of song, falling into a deeply personal realm.
The subtlety and nuance in Heather’s music also comes from her inclination towards ambient and experimental sounds, con…

The Preservation label presents Nuojuva Halava, the debut album from Helsinki, Finland’s Ous Mal. Ous Mal is the recording project for 22-year old Olli Aarni. With previous CD-R releases for both Finland’s 267-Lattajjaa and the UK’s Under The Spire, Ous Mal has already gained fine notice for his expansive sound, further developed in widescreen ways on Nuojuva Halava, his first full-length. Finding common ground between the dusty tenor of old-school hip hop cassettes and the fog of deep ambience …

The Preservation label presents From Here To There, the debut album from San Francisco’s Ben Swire. While From Here To There can sit snugly in the canon of electronica, it’s played out with expansive vision and immediate warmth. Woven together with a deft sense of minimalism and melody using double bass, interlocking guitars and crisp percussion, the use of live instrumentation against densely layered field recordings finds great balance between elasticity and deep ambient underpinnings. The acc…

The latest Preservation release hails from the USA's Midwest, featuring a double helping of songs from multi-instrumentalist and lo-fi folkster Clare Adrienne Cameron Hubbard. Although each CD is only an EP's length, the two sets of songs have been divided to denote the stylistic differences between sets, even though Hubbard's songwriting tone remains steady throughout. On the first disc Caethua evokes the raw intimacy of Diane Cluck, occasionally augmenting her spindly acoustic guitar accompani…

Aaron not only surprised many with his 2007 debut Almond but gained great notices worldwide. The album set him on a course of many collaborations, and has since worked with a diverse array of artists, including Machinefabriek, Dawn Smithson (Jessamine, Sunn O))) and Jasper TX. His second album, River Water, proved a darkly compelling turn and stands as a forebear to Chautauqua in its pursuit of a distillation of pure emotional range, poised at the meeting point of intensity, calm and resolution.…

The name under which Melbourne singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Paddy Mann records and performs, Grand Salvo has quietly and unassumingly developed a body of work that has inspired both hardcore devotion and more recently, wider recognition, stemming from his previous album, Death. The ambitious fairytale orchestration received rave reviews from all over the country. With Soil Creatures, Grand Salvo has returned with no less scope but sits within quieter surroundings. This gorgeous s…

Brand new solo release for guitarist Nicola Ratti with his languid, disarming sound of small and gentle gestures and loping rhythms, often repeated and subtly shifting in an impressionistic vision founded on traditional elements. Merging guitar, piano and double bass with percussion, environmental sounds and occasional voice, Nicola constructs songs that by turns float, swell and envelop in magnetic fashion. A piercing tenderness remains at the core of his work, though on Ode there is a more exp…

The Preservation label presents Beeswax Ephemera from Iowa City guitarist Evan Miller. With one eye on the future and one on the past, his playing has considerable technical and abstract expanse, though retains a wonderful melodic sensibility upfront. Evan’s experimental leanings give Beeswax Ephemera an idiosyncratic quality that mark an inventive new talent in the world of artists taking guitar music into exciting new directions. These nominally earthy compositions take flight with the undenia…

Pimmon is the alias for electronic composer Paul Gough. In the last decade, Pimmon has forged an international reputation for creating dense, challenging and engaging electronic music. Smudge Another Yesterday is Pimmon’s first full length release in five years. This release picks up and goes further from the point where the acclaimed Secret Sleeping Birds left off. Smudge Another Yesterday is an exploration of the song behind the noise; the secret whispers hidden in the static. Within these vas…

The Preservation label presents Thoughts Melt In The Air, the second album from the pairing of Italian composers Fabio Orsi and Valerio Cosi. Both Orsi and Cosi have become recognized widely internationally for their prolific solo output and kindred spirits in creating momentous soundscapes that ring with lyrical feeling. Still in his early 20s, Valerio Cosi has released a seemingly endless stream of work that swirls around giddily in a sweep of heady free-jazz (his main instrument is tenor saxo…

Oliver’s background as an artist partly began in classical music and opera – he sings with the Victorian Opera and curates an annual Schubert recital. However, he also spent many years home-recording his songs as well as playing them in pubs, often accompanied by a compelling yarn during sets. His love for telling a tale also comes into his weekly performing for children’s story time at his local library, this playing a defining role in his unique take on song. Add to that a love of Elvis …

This second collaborative work from the pair is an expansive and ambitious recasting of American music now in the public domain. The influence of the songs collected here is long and widespread for their style and lyricism, forging a rich tradition and ever evolving history. With their interpretations, Carter and Kiefer have taken the songs that have seeped into their souls and extended upon them in such a way that brings something entirely new to their original ideas. It’s something that’s enti…

Tan or Boil – a pun on the name of bratty short stop from those 1970s Bad News Bears films that stuck – is the alias of the Pittsburgh-born Jason Bacasa. After growing up in Pittsburgh and studying graphic design, Jason took flight from his home town to work freelance in a variety of cities, though his latest and current stint in New York seems more permanent than those in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. On the songwriting side, Jason’s continual travels kept him to just an acoustic guit…

Since the release of his debut album Almond in 2006, Aaron Martin has been lauded worldwide for songs of unique warmth, whimsy, feeling and charm – what Australia’s Radio National described as ‘a genre all of its own’, The Age saw as ‘one of the most stunning debuts of the year’, and Foxy Digitalis called ‘rich, beautiful music’. The newfound recognition Almond created for Aaron has him go on to contribute to various compilations and split releases as well as a collaboration with Dutch electroni…

Saddleback is the solo project for producer Tony Dupé. In many ways, with its warm and exploratory craft, Everything’s A Love Letter is the culmination of the varying strands in Tony’s musical life.Tony first came to notice in Glovebox, who put an ethereal, ambient twist on the indie-pop scene as far back as the early ‘90s. Glovebox’s swirling sound has been as unhurried as its release schedule, though no matter how spare their output, each album has always found a warm reception. The group were…

Robert Horton’s musical exploits are diverse, heady and spans over three decades. From his early punk days to joining various groups in pursuit of free jazz, drone and even psychedelic hillbilly, Horton is happily hard to pin down. He also makes his own instruments. One found regularly across the 30-plus releases he’s been involved with since 2005 is the ‘boot’, a four-stringed instrument that plays like an otherworldly dobro or slide guitar. Tom Carter has been a lightning rod-like figure…

Post is the solo guise for James Wilkinson, who has gleefully cracked the ground between free jazz and punk in Bucketrider and made sonic cinema with the electro-dub-hip-hop fusion of High Pass Filter. He’s also provided innovative sound design as director for the internationally acclaimed Snuff Puppets, and his adventurous spirit runs free through Post’s pop persona. It’s the same ecstatic abandon shared by the likes of Mouse on Mars, Plaid and Caribou. Post’s playful but stirring sense of comp…

Since the release of Saddleback’s acclaimed 2004 debut Everything’s A Love Letter, Tony has found increasing demand for his touch behind the recording desk. Tony’s studio is housed in his Kangaroo Valley residence on the south coast of New South Wales. Found inside are all sorts of instruments including various guitars, percussion makers, horns, a clarinet, a double bass, piano and a specially-fashioned drum set. Having arranged and played these on other peoples’ work – most notably for Sydney’s…

Since the release of Saddleback’s acclaimed 2004 debut Everything’s A Love Letter, Tony has found increasing demand for his touch behind the recording desk. Tony’s studio is housed in his Kangaroo Valley residence on the south coast of New South Wales. Found inside are all sorts of instruments including various guitars, percussion makers, horns, a clarinet, a double bass, piano and a specially-fashioned drum set. Having arranged and played these on other peoples’ work – most notably for Sydney’s…

In the all-female duo Coa, Eddie Corman trades on volume and velocity in a howling rock beast that could well fit the bill soundtracking an apocalyptic horror movie. Both Eddie and Marcon first played together in an early incarnation of LSD-March, pysch-blasted legends of the Japanese underground. Combining their names to form a new endeavour into Japanese acid folk, Eddie and Marcon – as Eddie Marcon – have been working in much quieter tones to make delicate, gorgeous and esoteric music. Shinin…

The passion for exploratory acoustic music currently in grip has been with Steffen Basho-Junghans for a long time. Based in Berlin, Steffen has been one of the most searching artists in the ever-increasingly loose folk idiom for over two decades. His work on the six and twelve-string guitar makes him a modern-day counterpart to great trailblazers John Fahey and Robbie Basho, from who he takes his name as a creative talisman. While experimentation is a feature of Steffen’s playing, the soul of ac…

For all intents and purposes, Grand Salvo is the work of singer-songwriter Paddy Mann. Grand Salvo’s debut album, 1642-1727, and its follow-up, River Road, earned him rave reviews and a solid following at home and beyond for his stark, sensitive and beautiful songs. After a spell living in Europe, Paddy returned to Australia and began work on another album he’d dreamt up while away, A set of songs that acts as a children’s storybook, the album became cursed with too many recording problems and P…

After playing bass with Rodan, pioneers of post-rock and post-hardcore, the long-respected and much-lauded Tara Jane ONeil has formed bands like The Sonora Pine and Retsin and has collaborated with Sebadoh, Papa M, Come, Low and Ida. Her first two solo albums for the Quarterstick label (Calexico, Rachels, June of ‘44), Peregrine and In The Sun Lines drew great acclaim for a rich musical tapestry The Wire has called “evocative dream music”. Consistently on the move, ONeil records all over the US,…

Motion – Movement In Australian Sound is a generous, 2-CD overview of 22 artists representing Australia’s burgeoning terrain of electronic and experimental music. From Scott Horscroft’s mesmerising piece for eleven guitars, the sublimely sweet, driving tones of Pretty Boy Crossover, Sue Harding’s melodies from dot matrix printers to renown veteran Alan Lamb’s awe-inducing casting of field recordings from the West Australian outback, Motioncasts wide to expose some of the most creative and …