★Preservation
Burnt Offerings
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…
Slay Me in My Sleep
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…
Body Moving Slowly
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…
Seamstress In A Suitcase
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…
The Possum Wakes at Night
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 …
Post
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…
Motion - Movement In Australian Sound
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 …
Everything's A Love Letter
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…
Bones
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,…
Chautauqua
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.…
From here to there
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 Long Afternoon Of Earth
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…