Camera Obscura Records

United Bible Studies CD Out Now!

2009-06-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

Time to catch up with a lot of news, starting with this release.

It's been a while since we've had something new to offer our fine customer base, so we're glad it's a very special release, close to our hearts, and hopefully, very soon, yours. This won't be in the shops for a month or so yet, but for mailing list and web customers, it's available right now.

Artist: United Bible Studies
Title: The Jonah
Cat No: CAM084CD, 10 tracks, 49:49 mins approx

About the band:

Originally formed in Ireland as a duo with an unhealthy desire to emulate the Incredible String Band, UBS quickly evolved into a collective and laid the groundwork for the Deserted Village label and associated activities. Since their formation in winter 2001 they have played and recorded sporadically-never settling on one recording method, or on one line-up. Previous CD "The Shore that Fears the Sea" showed a love of the unadorned beauty of Shirley Collins, Anne Briggs and Vashti Bunyan, Current 93 and Coil.

Live shows throughout Ireland and Britain and most recently the USA (Including Terrastock '08) have seen them wildly improvise with up to twelve members, or play straight trad as a trio. Standard rock instrumentation is bolstered with theremins, fretless banjos, accordions, bugles... whatever comes to hand... Their philosophy is that all paths are equal, all approaches relevant. Members have sometimes met on stage for the first time.

Though inspired by Irish folk, UBS have always seen themselves in a global context. They've had a slew of releases on microlabels across the planet and have invited many like-minded artists to tour Ireland with them including Avarus, Fursaxa, Corsano/Flaherty, Black Forest/Black Sea, Circle, Sunburned Hand of the Man and Josephine Foster. "The Jonah" is their third formal studio album, after "Stations of the Sun, Transits of the Moon", and "Shore…", and the first to garner international release.

About the release:

Camera Obscura is proud to be able to present to the world the follow-up to the band's masterful "The Shore That Fears the Sea" (Deserted Village 2006), and it's a cornucopia of sonic delights, traversing the spectrum from delicate folk to sprawling progressive rock.

The album title is a reference to the James Herbert novel where a "Jonah" is a cursed person who brings bad luck everywhere, and is also the title of the 16 minute avant/progressive folk suite that forms the record's centerpiece. Richard Youngs' progressive rock project Ilk provided the impetus for the band to make a "Prog Album" (which was the working title) so they started with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink opus "The Jonah". It was the first track recorded for this album during a two week burst of industry and creativity when the band locked themselves away in Mullingar. David's imagery for the first section was partially inspired by the Vin Diesel film Pitch Black and it takes flight in all kinds of different dream directions from there. Running the gamut from delicate acoustic guitar to Sunn 0))) style doom metal and back again, it's an extraordinary feat of the imagination.

Around this central track, a range of shorter tracks orbit, typically acoustic or folk-rock in nature with occasional experimental flourishes, they are characterized by glorious melodies and arrangements and a peerless array of guests. Current 93's Richard Moult provides synth and very David Tibet like vocals to opener "The Swallowing", and help out with the space folk piece "A for Andromeda". Ex Mellow Candle singer Allison O'Donnell provides vocals for several tracks, including the climactic conclusion to a Dave Colohan and Sharron Kraus duet version of the traditional "Lowlands of Holland". Sharron's stamp is elsewhere as well, playing tin whistle on "Veilsong" and her unique parlor guitar was borrowed to bring instrumental "Mirror in Clerkwell" to fruition.

With a sound like expiring infant suns weeping for worlds they'll never warm, "The Jonah" should appeal to lovers of the likes of Espers, Black Forest/Black Sea, Sharron Kraus, and Nick Castro, as well as darker matter like Current 93 and Sol Invictus.

Check out some sounds:

Go to http://www.cameraobscura.com.au and select "Sounds" from the menu. Or visit: http://www.myspace.com/unitedbiblestudies

Price US$15.00/AU$22.00 including shipping.

Method of payment accepted outside Australia:
Go to: http://www.cameraobscura.com.au to purchase on-line via Paypal. There is a link on the home page, as well as on catalog and release info pages.

If having trouble ordering via Paypal through the site, send us your Paypal address, and we can send a invoice direct to you.

Method of payment accepted within Australia:
Paypal (use the US$ or AU$ options), Direct Debit, Bank Deposit (use the AU$ cost of $22.00).

For direct debit, bank details are:
Bank Name: Westpac Banking Corporation
Account Name: Camera Obscura Records
BSB Number: 033018
Account Number: 133347

New Black Sun Ensemble CD Available for Mail Order!

2008-06-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

20 years down the track from their debut and the Black Sun Ensemble have come full circle, presenting a pristine, wholly instrumental and semi-acoustic work that recalls their legendary LP debut.

Artist: Black Sun Ensemble
Title: Across the Sea of Id: The Way to Eden
Cat No: CAM083CD, 12 tracks, 52.53 mins approx

About the release:

What started out being a side project between Black Sun Ensemble guitarist/founder Jesus Acedo and multi-instrumentalist Eric Johnson, "Across the Sea of Id: The Way to Eden" has become the final collaborative project of new material from Black Sun Ensemble involving Tucson’s Sun Zoom Spark members and their collective, SlowBurn Records. In fact, "Across the Sea of Id: The Way to Eden" maybe the final Black Sun Ensemble record. After completion of the recording, it remains unclear if Jesus Acedo will choose to continue with music. Because of this, "Across the Sea of Id" may be the capstone of a nearly 25 year career that has created some of the most unique rock music of our time.

"Across the Sea of Id: The Way to Eden" is a dramatic shift away from the heavy ethno/progressive rock of 2006’s Bolt of Apollo CD to an earlier style of semi-acoustic instrumental music that became Black Sun Ensemble signature sound in the 1980s. According to Eric Johnson, “…in the end, BSE has truly come full-circle. "Across the Sea of Id" is the record I have always wanted to make with the Ensemble. It captures what I think makes Jesus Acedo such a huge talent its not about the guitar solos, its about the haunting quality of his song-writing.”

After recording over three hours of material for the project, BSE chose songs that created a rich blend of past and new works. The material, all penned by Acedo and arranged by Johnson, ranges from not only engaging retellings of early work like the majestic Blues for Rainer and a definitive version of the medley Sky Pilot Suite, but also offers a trance-inspired version of St. Cecilia and a more subdued Baphomet’s Curse from "Bolt of Apollo".

However, it is the new material that offers a singular, dreamy vision of BSE’s potentially final works. The two title tracks, Across the Sea of Id and Eden Song, are reflective, yet hallucinatory explorations into Acedo’s unique compositional and melodic sensibility. While Angel de la Guardia has a refined yet explosive rock swagger, it is balanced by the meditation Perelandra and La Paz.

"Across the Sea of Id: The Way to Eden" was recorded and mixed by Eric Johnson at Tucson’s SlowBurn recording studio and was mastered by John Axtell at Signal House Studio. The art for the album was created by BSE percussionist, John Paul Marchand. It's an enhanced CD, featuring a music video directed by John Paul Marchand of BSE’s signature Dove of the Desert, recorded live on radio station KXCI 91.3FM, Tucson.

Check out some sounds:

Go to http://www.cameraobscura.com.au and select "Sounds" from the menu.

Price US$16.00/AU$22.00 including shipping.

Method of payment accepted outside Australia:
Go to: http://www.cameraobscura.com.au to purchase on-line via Paypal.

Method of payment accepted within Australia:
Paypal (use the US$ option), Direct Debit, Bank Deposit (use the AU$ option).

For direct debit, bank details are:
Bank Name: Westpac Banking Corporation
Account Name: Camera Obscura Records
BSB Number: 033018
Account Number: 133347

Rusalnaia CD Now Available for Mail Order!

2008-01-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our first release for 2008. We bring you new psych-folk from Sharron Kraus and Ex-Reverie member Gillian Chadwick. Eight songs influenced in greater or lesser part by Mellow Candle, Trees and Jefferson Airplane and coming out like "gypsies in Bohemia, smoking opium and drinking ginger tea". Luminously Pagan: a soundtrack to Bergman's "The Virgin Spring" rather than "The Wicker Man". Read on...

Artist: Rusalnaia
Title: Rusalnaia
Cat No: CAM082CD, 8 tracks, 38:18 mins approx

About the release:

Rusalnaia is about honouring (some would say placating) the Rusalki - mischievous water nymphs capable of tickling victims to death - with song, dance, tree-decorating and wreath-making. Rusalnaia is what happened when Sharron Kraus and Gillian Chadwick, then neighbours in Fishtown, Philadelphia, became friends and decided to honour the Rusalki in each other! The two, coming from very different musical backgrounds, made journeys into each other's terrain until it was no longer clear what the boundaries were. In the collaborative process they became as close as sisters and found their way to the shared musical aesthetic that is Rusalnaia.

Rusalnaia's album was recorded at Hexham Head Studios in Philadelphia, engineered by Greg Weeks (Espers, The Valerie Project) in two sessions through 2007 that corresponded with Sharron's extended visits to the country. Weeks helped capture the duo's organic and sometimes unusual instrumentation, from dulcimer and guitar to pennywhistles and goat's nail shakers, and contributed his own accents to a few tracks: acid Les Paul leads and vintage 70's synths. Eight tracks of haunting, ritualistic, magical pagan-folk were the result, varying from the darkly processional tale of dispossession "Shifting Sands", though the Comus-like ceremonies of the title track to the extended forest-folk trance of the concluding "Wild Summer".

Sharron Kraus is a singer/musician/songwriter who creates music rooted in the folk traditions of England and Appalachia. Her first two solo albums were released on Camera Obscura to critical acclaim and her third will be released on Durtro on March 10, 2008. She has worked with The Iditarod, Fursaxa, Meg Baird and Helena Espvall, and her most recent release was Right Wantonly A-Mumming, a collection of seasonal songs recorded with an eight-strong host of traditional English folk singers and musicians including Jon Boden, John Spiers, Ian Woods and Fay Hield.

Gillian Chadwick is the creative force behind Ex Reverie, whose debut glam-rock full-length, The Door into Summer, was released by Language of Stone (an imprint of Drag City) on Jan 22, 2008 in the US. In addition to Rusalnaia and Ex Reverie, she also plays lead guitar in the Philadelphia-based dance-prog outfit Golden Ball, and is one-half of the Black Sabbath-tinged duo Woodwose.

Read many reviews of Sharron's work here:
http://www.sharronkraus.com/

Check out some sounds:

Go to http://www.cameraobscura.com.au and select "Sounds" from the menu.
Or visit: http://www.myspace.com/rusalnaia

Price US$16.00/AU$22.00 including shipping.

How to purchase:
Go to: http://www.cameraobscura.com.au to purchase on-line via Paypal.

Linus Pauling Quartet LP Available for Mail Order Now!

2007-11-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

A real pleasure to be able to offer a vinyl release to you - the first one in many moons. This will not last long! Ordering details and release notes follow:

This item is available to order to addresses outside Australia from the CTD Ltd online store http://sakistore.net. Most of the copies are in the USA and therefore best shipped from a reliable on-line mail order service, thus the CTD option was considered best. If having problems or CTD run out, email me and I'll try and hook you up with the band, as they will probably have copies after CTD's are gone. Click here:

Clear Spot in the EU should eventually have copies but I don't think they do yet.

I have a tiny number of copies for Australian mail order customers, so you guys email me if you are interested and I'll get ordering details to you.

About the release:

Artist: Linus Pauling Quartet
Title: All Things Are Light
Cat No: CAM080LP, 7 tracks, 34.44 mins approx (Limited to 500 copies)
Format Details: LP, Purple vinyl, 12 page insert, bonus CDR of LP tracks

About the release:

The Linus Pauling Quartet is one of the most formidable bastions to have risen from the same primordial Texas Psych waters as the Mike Gunn. The band has been tenaciously distilling its chemically induced music over five critically acclaimed if difficult to find albums. The five to seven piece “quartet” is known for putting its three guitars to the floorboard and taking listeners straight off the cliff simply because "anything worth doing is worth overdoing!"

Limited to 500 copies, ‘All Things Are Light’ is The band at its most Herzogian and bombastic, pulling no punches and taking no prisoners. Etched within the grooves, listeners will find epic, guitar-drenched songs about aliens, hallucinogenic psych numbers that turn on you and crush you when you least expect it, drunken brawling garage rock, heavy and dense guitar stomps, a country ode to 40 oz. malt liquor, a punk tribute to cuisine best not discussed in mixed company, and a sprawling sword metal epic; this concluding piece being inspiration for some brilliant insert art from Mike Gunn alumnus John Cramer. Keeping it in the family, Tom Carter (Mike Gunn, Charalambides) weighs in with entertaining liner notes.

If you want finesse, subtlety, and in-depth social commentary stay far away. But if you like your music big, loud and made by knuckle-scraping apes who will beat you with the jawbone of rock, this is the album you’ve been awaiting for.

Press quotes on previous outings:

"A large red sticker proclaiming WEIRD ALERT could not make things plainer." -- Q Magazine (UK)

"Variety through dementia indicative of excessive drug use and boredom" -- Flipside (USA)

"one of the top purveyors of the Texas stoner psychedelic style" - Free City Media (USA)

"..possibly the most enigmatic yet bombastic rock band to emerge out of Texas in the last 10 years." - The Broken Face (Sweden)

"Anthemic, stupid and selflessly unrestrained, the LPQ eventually attain self immolation of sorts during the sprawling chaos."-Ptolemaic Terrascope (UK)

" [the band] should consider doing a few less bong hits" - Option Magazine

Check out MP3s:

Go to http://www.cameraobscura.com.au and select "Sounds" from the menu.

Linus Pauling Quartet LP Out Soon!

2007-10-28T15:39:00.000-07:00

Cover Art

The LP4 has been carrying the Texas Psych torch since the Mid-90s. Following in the footsteps of the Mike Gunn and Dry Nod this seven member quartet has been praised in the pages of Ptolemaic Terrascope (UK), Rockerilla (Italy), Magnet (USA), Broken Face (Sweden), et al. Their latest slab of psychedelic riff-carnage will be released on purple vinyl 12" Vinyl LP on 06 November 2007 on Camera Obscura. The release includes a 12 page insert and free CD-R of the album tracks and limited to 500 copies. Ordering links will be provided very soon, so keep checking back. Release notes can be found here. Listen to MP3s from this and other releases here.

Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher CD Reviews!

2007-10-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

Check out what the press are saying here:

All Music Guide (4-Stars)
Ptolemaic Terrascope On-Line
Songs:Illinois

Praise by Broken Face blog: "Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher’s To All Dead Sailors (Camera Obscura) is a concept album of sorts that explores the mysteries of the sea. Acoustic and electric instruments are combined with field recordings to create a wide palette of oceanic colors. We get the sonic equivalent to its brutality and we get the hard-explained beauty of the crashing sea in its eternal struggle to create physical shapes beyond the world of imagination. But most of all we get tracks that overflow with longing over people lost at sea or people being away from home for too long. It’s an intriguing sonic document that goes from airy fogbanks of sound experiments to graceful, soft-spoken, folk-tinged melancholia with impressive ease. This is one of those hushed, heart aching, and utterly timeless moments when the sum indeed is greater than its parts."

And forthcoming from Dream Magazine: "Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher To All Dead Sailors (Camera Obscura) Oceanic sounds, water, waves and low spectral traces of instrumental illumination glimpsed through the sea spray begins and ends things. Acoustic guitar deep and resonant, while a fellow softly speaks in Spanish and English as a soft singer carresses a song about a lonely sailor so far from home. Subtle, soft spoken but gently resolute. Sweetly sad story songs, hallucinatory dreamy visions, ambient fogbanks overflowing with cool menace, melancholic prayers, lovely instrumentals and doomed soul’s laments. Shifting from folk-tender, to darkly haunting memories or imaginings. Wind-tossed soundscapes turn into warm family reunions in paradise. Whether Astrolabe was written just to use such a great word in a song or not, may never be known, but it’s a charming chiming thing one way or another. The title track is a sublime sorrowful ballad, but it’s all thematically unified in it’s deep blue hue."

Cool Marianne Nowottny Video

2007-10-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

Fresh From Youtube, a video for a new track from her Abaton Book Co release "What Is She Doing?":

And the Nowottny CD on Camera Obscura "Illusion of the Sun" is still available.

Kiefer/Pitcher CD Now Out For Mail Order

2007-08-24T00:38:00.000-07:00

We follow up Christian Kiefer's critically acclaimed albums on Camera Obscura ("Czar Nicholas is Dead") and Undertow ("Dogs and Donkeys") with Christian's new and very accessible song-based collaboration with fellow traveler Jefferson Pitcher. The official release date is 02 October, but as usual we offer you, our beloved MySpace customers, the option to purchase from now, well in advance of the street date.

Artist: Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher

Title: To All Dead Sailors

Cat No: CAM081CD, 14 tracks, 53:04 min

About the release:

The slow shifting hiss of the surf fades. The footsteps of men stumble across the beach rock; a tottering over, facedown. Waves on the stones further out: black, now green, now shadow again. Somewhere, so far under the surface that only the bleakest fish run their dark gunnels: ships rest their masts. Crabs like spiders spin homes in the maw of rock-smashed hull and keel.

It is upon such images that Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher have built "To All Dead Sailors". A collection of songs, instrumentals, and sonic experiments, this is an album that explores the mystery of the sea: its violence, its beauty, its grace. Through it all, the album tells the story of the men who have chosen a life, and ultimately a death, in its vast expanses. From the story of a haggard submarine captain disgraced amongst his countrymen, to the lonely sound of the ship's engine room, to the tale (borrowed from Pablo Neruda) of a mermaid wandering up onto dry land and into a world she could not have imagined, these are songs and sounds that envelop the listener in a long rumination on things of the sea.

Merging songs with more experimental sounds has long been of interest to both musicians. Pitcher developed his experimental performance as a member of Tintinambulate, a free-improv workshop based in upstate New York and featuring legendary avant-garde musician Pauline Oliveros. His previous albums, including the superb ambient song cycle "I am Not in Spain" (Mudita/Moonpalace), move between songs and sonic textures, displaying his ongoing interest in using sound to create a particular sonic space or location. Pitcher's work is mirrored in Kiefer's, who has a long history of alternating between song and experimental forms, including his recent albums "Czar Nicholas Is Dead" (a mostly-instrumental look at the Russian Revolution on Camera Obscura) and Dogs & Donkeys (a song-based narrative on Undertow).

Listeners may remember Kiefer and Pitcher's previous collaboration: "The Inexplicable Falling" (Mudita), a split full-length CD with Pitcher fronting the now defunct orchestral indie-rock band Above the Orange Trees. Unlike that album, "To All Dead Sailors" is a collaborative project, with the singers trading harmonies and instruments on various tracks, and working through various songwriting ideas as they floated to the surface. Acoustic and electric instruments are combined with field recordings to create a finished project that is reminiscent of Brian Eno's ambient projects, the moody soundscapes of Sigur Rós, and the song-based work of Califone, Xiu Xiu, and Damien Rice.

Press for previous Kiefer releases:

"Dogs and Donkeys":
Pitchfork Review
All Music Guide Review

"Czar Nicholas Is Dead":
Pitchfork Review

Other releases:

"Exodust is the beautiful musical evocation of a page of Americana. Kiefer scavenged through the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin collections at the Library of Congress, looking for songs and stories by the protagonists. Their narrative, along with creaking chairs, fiddles, singing, etc., establish a strong American folk atmosphere. Where Kiefer's artistry shines is in how his own themes adopt the simplicity of his subject, creating an integrated narrative of its own. - All Music Guide on "Exodust" (Extreme Records 2002)

"Christian Kiefer's music brings the listener directly in contact with a new sonic landscape. The atmosphere is crusty and old, hearkening back to a time when mine shafts dotted the forests. I grew up in the same part of the world and I am intimate with its shape. Kiefer captures it beautifully; his music is the real deal." - Terry Riley reviewing "Welcome to Hard Times" (Extreme Records 2000)

"I have one thing to say about Christian Kiefer: It's GREAT to hear new music!" - Thurston Moore

Check out MP3s:

Go to the Camera Obscura Web Site and select "Sounds" from the menu. Or visit: http://www.myspace.com/saintjoan

Price US$16.00/AU$22.00 including shipping.

Method of payment accepted outside Australia:

Go to: the Camera Obscura web site to purchase on-line via Paypal.

Concealed cash will work for us at a pinch as long as in US$ or AU$. Any
other currency than AU$ add the equivalent of US$7.00 for exchange fee.

Method of payment accepted within Australia:

Paypal (use the US$ option), Direct Debit, Bank Deposit.

For direct debit, bank details are:

Bank Name: Westpac Banking Corporation
Account Name: Camera Obscura Records
BSB Number: 033018
Account Number: 133347

Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher Collaborate For Upcoming Camera Obscura CD!

2007-08-12T00:14:00.000-07:00

Conceptual collaboration between Kiefer and Pitcher. It's a collection of songs, textures, and field recordings related to the sea, seafaring, death, and beauty, and connects to the song-based side of both artists work; exemplified by "Medicine Show" and "Welcome to Hard Times" on Extreme Records, and their split CD from 2002 "The Inexplicable Falling". Release notes can be found here. Links to MP3s can be found here.

Saintly Press For "The Wrecker's Lantern"

2007-08-12T00:10:00.000-07:00

Some great reviews of the CD "The Wreckers Lantern" here:

All Music Guide (4-stars)
Delusions of Adequacy
Ptolemaic Terrascope
Stylus Magazine

Saint Joan CD "The Wrecker's Lantern" Now Out

2007-05-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

Second release for the year - Saint Joan's debut full length release and long-awaited follow up to their self-released "One at Twilight" mini-album.

Artist: Saint Joan
Title: The Wrecker's Lantern
Cat No: CAM079CD, 10 tracks, 46:06 mins

About the release: The title of Saint Joan's first full length album alludes to the 19th century practice of luring a ship onto the rocks by faking the beam of a lighthouse with a swinging lantern, causing the ship to run aground, its treasure to be plundered. It continues the band's interest in all things maritime…the sea as the subconscious as Carl Jung would have it. The band takes inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch in "The Four Last Things" and The Tempest in "Singing Bowl". They conjure love and loss, seasick sailors and freight trains, hills and mountains, rivers and fading street lights.

The album continues the sound established by band's first release, the 7" single "All Things Melt/The Ice House" as well as the more sparse chamber music leanings of 2005 mini album "One At Twilight". Epic, psychedelic stream-of-consciousness psychodramas about loss like 'December' contrast with the more fragmented, melancholy of "Gone" with its looping guitar and lush strings. The widescreen folk-rock drive of "Singing Bowl", place it alongside vintage Walkabouts.

Recorded in an old warehouse in the autumn "The Wrecker's Lantern" evokes time and place at every turn and yet seeks to transcend them. It is the sound of beauty, timeless and incarnate.

About the band: Saint Joan are five musicians originally West Bridgford in Nottingham, England, Mohacs in Hungary and Strasbourg in France. A few musicians have come and gone much like the English summer but they have settled as they are now, and call on the odd flautist, cellist, vibraphone-player, et al, when the mood takes them.

They are inspired by stream-of-consciousness prose, like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, by the "darkness on the edge of town", flawed beauty and black comedy. They listen to many things: Nick Cave, The Tindersticks, Jonathan Richman, The Velvets,Tom Waits and Galaxie 500 among them.

Press for previous SJ releases:

"… a wonderful British take on the glow of post-jangle California strum pop" - Byron Coley in The Wire

"Hints of disheveled, Tindersticks- style romance peek out from behind a violin-lined veil of Low-like austerity. Ellen McGee's throaty purr and harrowing falsetto conjures images of a young Polly Harvey communing with 60s folk/blues troubadouress Judy Henske." - Magnet Magazine review of "One at Twilight"

"…sleepy sullen sensuality conjures smoky opiated dreams in the mind of the listener… when Ellen sings, she makes heartache sound like something truly beautiful." - Dream Magazine review of "One at Twilight"

Check out MP3s:

Go to Camera Obscura Web Site and select "Sounds" from the menu. Or visit: http://www.myspace.com/saintjoan

Price US$15.00/AU$22.00 including shipping.

Method of payment accepted outside Australia:

Go to: Camera Obscura Web Site to purchase on-line via Paypal.

Method of payment accepted within Australia:

Paypal (use the US$ option), Direct Debit, Bank Deposit.

For direct debit, bank details are:

Bank Name: Westpac Banking Corporation
Account Name: Camera Obscura Records
BSB Number: 033018
Account Number: 133347

Saint Joan's "The Wrecker's Lantern" coming in June

2007-05-07T18:31:00.000-07:00

We are proud to announce the imminence of the much awaited debut full-length CD from night-side Nottingham folk-rockers Saint Joan, set to consolidate the reputation established by the magnificent 2005 mini-album "One at Twilight". Echoes of PJ Harvey, Opal, The Walkabouts and even Joy Division coalesce into a beautiful new form of dream pop. "A wonderful British take on the glow of post-jangle Californian strum pop" quoth Byron Coley in The Wire.

Visit them at the Saint Joan web site or on their MySpace page for more info and goodies.

Cover art:

Major Press Love for Tanakh's "Saunders Hollow"!

2007-05-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

What they said!

"Lush with strings, vibraphone, and Campbell's ethereal backing vocals, this gorgeous track kicks off the Poulos era with a prolonged, ecstatic sigh, the full group carried along by the song's supple currents for seven time-collapsed minutes." From the 7.5 scored Pitchfork Review

" Saunders Hollow explores an aesthetic of restrained, mysterious beauty, a combination of a processional and a stately and poised collapse." From the 4-star All Music Guide Review

"Like a barefoot stroll through tall, soft grass on a lazy Summer afternoon." Ptolemaic Terrascope

" Hot on the heels of its acclaimed "Ardent Fevers" record, Tanakh releases its “sister” Saunders Hollow, which focuses on member Michele Poulos’ acid folk pop, rather than leader Jesse Poe’s psychedelic ruminations. Poulos’ songs are simply lovely, with singing to match. And if the band is following its usual improvisational tack, it must be the most sympathetic group of musicians ever, as every arrangement is tasteful and supportive of Poulos’ vision. “Longer Than Sorrow,” the rocked-up “Kept” and “Marcel Proust” are divinely pretty, emotionally filling and damned irresistible. Saunders Hollow is one of the nicest surprises and Tanakh one of the freshest discoveries I’ve made in a long time." High Bias Web Zine

Deserted Village Article Just Posted on PT Site

2007-02-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

The latest long-form article from this source is an interview with Gavin Prior and Dave Colohan on the subject of the ruling Irish underground label du jour - Deserted Village. You can find it here.

Here's a taster from the introduction:

In 1770, Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield and his play She Stoops to Conquer) wrote an epic poem - The Deserted Village - in memory of his brother. In the poem, Goldsmith uses near hallucinogenic imagery to evoke a sense of landscape and life on the land, in a time when modernization was dispossessing the land's original inhabitants and changing its character irrevocably. Fast forward to the early 21^st Century, and the abiding sense of melancholy beauty conjured by Goldsmith in this work applies equally to the works of a new wave of underground Irish musicians orbiting micro-brewed labels like Deserted Village, Deadslackstring and Rusted Rail. These labels exist as a natural extension of these collectivist endeavours, because without them there would be little other way for their music to be heard. Pre-eminent among these is Deserted Village, with some 30-or-so releases to its name in a handful of year's existence.

Deserted Village started as a way to release the work of drone-improvisation outfit Murmansk, which itself grew out of an improvisation workshop conducted by the legendary Eddie Prevost-led ensemble AMM. Their complex future course was signposted by a second CD-R release, 'Music from the Deserted Village', which contained everything from drone to free jazz to lo-fi bedroom pop oddities to pristine psychedelic folk. (Go to their web site: like a number of the early Deserted Village releases you can download it for free now.) A string of releases explored these avenues; some accessible like underrated releases by Townparks Foundry and The Cosmic Nanou, and some gnarly and confronting, like releases by Amygdala, Wrecking Ball, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. And the drone continued with a second Murmansk CD-R and Agitated Radio Pilot's superbly evocative 'A Drifting Population'. Central to the label was the United Bible Studies collective concept, represented directly by the 'Stations of the Sun, Transits of the Moon', 'Airs of Sun and Stone' and the masterful 'The Shore that Fears the Sea', but also represented indirectly by nearly everything else, and most strikingly by the acoustic project Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree, whose two CD-Rs were snapped up be fans and collectors on release. Fear not though, a compilation CD of the MFFT material is forthcoming.

New Black Sun Ensemble Interview

2007-01-29T15:02:00.000-08:00

Aural Innovations Webzine have posted a revealing interview with members of Black Sun Ensemble here. There is also an odd but ecstatic review of the "Bolt of Apollo" CD on the same page.

2006 In Review for Deep Water Zine

2007-01-25T22:58:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts on the best releases of 2006 are posted here. Also check out the thoughts of my fellow Deep Water scribes Kevin Moist, Mats Gustafsson and Lee Jackson.

A sample of the introduction is here:

This is the time of year I like to call "nailing smoke to a wall time". With the proliferation of releases on CD and LP on major and minor labels, and the explosion of artifacts issued by the handmade CD-R underground, chances of actually hearing more than an infinitesimal sample of what's going on are slim, and add to that the increasing impact of download only releases and you've got an exercise on par with sorting out the shenanigans of quantum particles. Nonetheless, here is a selection of ten releases that stayed with me more than briefly - works that in effect became invisible co-travelers in the hurtling rail cart that was my passage through 2006. More.

Tanakh CD Now Available for Mail Order

2007-01-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

We're off and flying for the new year with our first 2007 release, Tanakh's "Saunders Hollow". We're particularly excited to bring you this, as it's the first release the band has done which hasn't been on the Alien8 label. Official street date is 14th Feb, but you can grab early bird copies by following the instructions at the end of this post.

Artist: Tanakh
Title: Saunders Hollow
Cat No: CAM078CD 8 tracks, 46:46 mins

About the release: Recorded the week before Ardent Fevers (already being hailed by critics as one of the best releases of 2006), in the same studio, with the same engineer (Bryan Hoffa), and with the same cast of musicians, Saunders Hollow, is not a collection of out-takes from those sessions, but a fully realised sister record to Ardent Fevers. Growing out of the song-writing explorations of Michele Poulos and Jesse Poe, Saunders Hollow is a record focusing on the songs of Poulos, who gave them to Poe in the form of thumb-strummed singer/songwriter demos. The results form a female Yin to the male Yang of recent Tanakh work. From the opening seconds of Poe's tortured guitar squalling to the final seconds of fading footsteps, bowed bass and saw that seal the record, the listener is treated to a million sounds all gently gelling into the world of sonic beauty we have come to expect from Tanakh, except for one thing…Tanakh in their ever changing exploration of sound have placed the lead vocals and songwriting in the ladybird hands of bassist and erstwhile backing vocalist Michele Poulos, leaving Poe in the musician/producer seat, dividing Poulos' previous backing vocal duties between himself and Isobel Campbell. What results is warm bouquet of songs that range from poppy-jazz, through renaissance remembrances, sweet folk, to dark drones and dreamy electronics and even straight up raunchy blues. Saunders Hollow is a place full of inviting mystery and rich texture, with musical twists and turns of every type, leaving the listener in a state of remembrance of all things past, like a stroll amongst Proustian Gardens. Gentle bass, scorching electric guitars, lilting tablas, Asian-strummed ukuleles, swirling electronics, lamenting violins, pulsing vibes, regal harpsichords, gospel organs and juke-joint pianos, sex-driven saxophones, folky acoustic guitars, sound-scaped lap steels, pulsing drums, and honeyed vocals grow together in an immense garden of sound and color that populates the dream landscape of Saunders Hollow.

About Tanakh: Tanakh is the banner for music written and improvised by a collective of musicians; music that is focused towards beauty and experimentation within structure instead of towards a particular musical genre or style. In the last six or so years this revolving collective has included a large number of musicians headed up by principle songwriter Jesse Poe. Although currently residing in Florence, Italy, Poe comes from a background of American rural music. His great-grandfather wrote country ballads and his great aunts and uncle had a live radio program broadcast out of Indiana. Tanakh has released a series of critically acclaimed CDs for the Alien8 label including "Villa Claustrophobia" (2002), "Dieu Deuil" and "s/t" (2004) and "Ardent Fevers" (2006).

Press for previous LB releases:

"Opulent and low key, gilded and grimy, humid and gorgeous." Ian Penman on "Villa Claustrophobia" for The Wire, July 2002. "Enhanced, groove-centered propulsion punctuated by the frequent Muscle Shoals-style horns, dustbowl lap steel, and a surprising abundance of hypercharged, Crazy Horse guitar soloing." Pitchfork reviewing "Ardent Fevers", April 06

Check out MP3s:

Go to the Camera Obscura Web Site and select "Sounds" from the menu. Or visit: http://www.myspace.com/poulostanakh

Price US$15.00/AU$22.00 including shipping.

Go to: Camera Obscura Web Site to purchase on-line via Paypal.

Agitated Radio Pilot Column for Deep Water

2007-01-03T22:31:00.000-08:00

I just penned a column for Deep Water covering eight releases by Irish outfit Agitated Radio Pilot:

You can read it here.

Intro:

Irishman Dave Colohan is a central figure in the United Bible Student movement, his voice unmistakable, his presence always felt. When you get your hands on an Agitated Radio Pilot release (they can be elusive) and wrap your ears around its melancholy pleasures, it's clear that the music of ARP is a conduit for Colohan's most personal thoughts and feelings, which are presented unfiltered (mostly) by the collaborative imperatives of other familial projects like United Bible Studies and Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree. When seven ARP releases came across my desk in a quite short space of time, the opportunity to round 'em up and make some kind of sense of the project's progress seemed too good to pass up. For the sake of completeness Your Turn to Go It Alone, which was received somewhat earlier (though still in 2006), is included. More.

2006 In Review

2006-12-30T23:56:00.000-08:00

In looking back at the kind of 2006 that Camera Obscura had, like 2005 it seemed very much a case of one step forward and two steps back. Or maybe only one step back, I'm not really sure. Like 2005, the label only released four new titles, and I'm hoping we're at the bottom of some kind of parabola there. In any case lots of good stuff happened, and bad as well.

On the up side, we continue to get offered great projects, to the extent that a fair bit of discipline is required not to just got out and borrow a shitload of money to get them done. Much of that hasn't come through in the schedule yet, but it will in 2007. I was stunned to be offered a Tanakh release, and that will be out early in the new year. It's their first release not to be on Alien8, and showcases the might songwriting and vocal chops of Tanakh member Michele Poulos. I was also blown away to be offered the debut full-lengther by Saint Joan to release, and it's a cracker. I'm also pretty excited to be releasing United Bible Studies' follow up to "The Shore That Fears the Sea", one of the best releases of 2006 IMHO. The Carnival compilation keeps expanding, and will get done when the funds are there - a grant will probably be needed. Also on the good side, I finally got some Shopping Cart e-commerce happening on the web site, and it's a lot easier for folks to order our stuff now. Lots of Lucky Bishops and Black Sun Ensemble CDs got ordered that way, and it was good to see that plenty of punters picked up back-catalog as well. Should have done it several years ago, really. Lot's of good (mainly web) reviews this year, too, including on Pitchfork and in Harp, which shouldn't be as big a deal as it seems to be, but there you are.

On the down side, the AUS-US exchange rate is killing cash-flow in death-of-a-thousand-cuts fashion. We just get less and less back for stuff sold in US$, which is a lot of our sales %-wise. The distributor world shifted on its axis with Caroline being bought out, and pretty much getting out of the indie game. It remains to be seen if others can fill the breach. But we're lucky to have CTD, Midheaven, Clear Spot and others, who care about the music, are pretty honorable in their dealings and always seem to rise above in the end. Piracy is probably killing our sales to some extent, as is our absence from iTunes, which may have to change next year, much as I don't want to sell stuff that way. I'll try it with the Tanakh release and see how it goes. Fewer and fewer print journals review our stuff, and there are no resources to change that. As discussed on this list earlier in the year, some magazines have adopted a bunker mentality against the volume of music out there, and it's hard to crack. There is so much stuff coming out of the CD-R underground now that these traditional forums for review are being left behind anyway. This is the first year in a long time that I've trouble compiling a top 10 list because of too much stuff, rather than not enough. I now have a baker's dozen for the year, which seems to change from day-to-day:

Agitated Radio Pilot "Your Turn To Go It Alone" (Rusted Rail 2x3" CD-R)
Anton Barbeau "In the Vilage of the Apple Sun" (Four-Way)
Nick Castro and the Young Elders "Come Into Our House" (SAAH)
Comets on Fire "Avatar" (Sub Pop)
Current 93 "Black Ships Ate the Sky"(Durtro)
Elf Power "Back to the Web" (Rykodisc)
Espers "II" (Drag City)
Fern Knight "Music For Witches and Alchemists" (VHF)
Flying Canyon - s/t (Soft Abuse)
Handsome Family "Last Days of wonder" (Carrot Top)
Meg Baird/Helena Espvall/Sharron Kraus "Leaves From Off the Tree" (Bo' Weavil)
Tanakh "Ardent Fevers" (Alien 8)
United Bible Studies "Shore That Fears the Sea" (Deserted Village)

So as to 2007, the scrawled back-of-the-beer coaster Camera obscura schedule looks something like this:

CAM078CD Tanakh "Saunders Hollow" (Feb 07, mail order from early Jan)
CAM079CD Saint Joan "The Wrecker's Lantern" (April 07)
CAM080CD United Bible Studies (May/Jun 07)
CAM081CD Christian Kiefer and Jeff Pitcher "For All the Dead Sailors" (Jun/Jul 07)

Carnival Compilation (2 or 3 CD set) maybe around mid-year.

Releases hoped for later in 2007, a new Alphane Moon CD, a new Fell CD, and Sharron Kraus and Gillian Chadwick as "Rusalnaia", we'll see what comes in and what funds are available.

Anyway, I wish everyone all the best for 2007, and may bad wars end, bad governments fall, and Peace, Love and Understanding reign, hippie-style.

td.

Tanakh "Saunders Hollow" Cover Art

2006-12-28T23:36:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Chia-chi Charlie Chang for the stunning imagery that will house the forthcoming Tanakh CD. Here is the front cover...

Bo' Weavil Interview for the Ptolemaic Terrascope

2006-12-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

I recently interviewed Mark from Bo' Weavil here. It was a fast an fun interview, with a great label owner who had never been interview before. Check it out if you've a mind to. Here's some intro as a taster:

In an industry dominated by the venal, the mediocre and the exploitative, just occasionally there comes along a label that seems to exist purely to celebrate the music itself. It shouldn't be rare but it seems to be. If you were to put together a dream brief for the kind of label that might ensure the continuance of music in hard formats like LP and CD, it might read something like London label Bo Weavil's statement of intent:

Bo Weavil Recordings is a new London based imprint dedicated to releasing on to vinyl and CD great music that has been long out of print, or never had a release before. The label's intention is to put out some lost gems from the wealth of traditional folk music and avant-garde / free music, while also releasing records cataloguing the current scene of avant folk music from around the globe.

Pretty ambitious, but a perusal of the label's prolific output between inception at the end of 2004 and now shows that they've pulled it off so far. Starting out with archival releases of old-timey goodness by maverick US musician, composer and philosopher Henry Flynt in deluxe vinyl editions, the label rapidly moved on to secure the LP release rights to several classic Shirley Collins LPs, as well as Anne Briggs' complete Topic recordings. Along side that, innovative acoustic guitar releases by the likes of Sir Richard Bishop and James Brayshaw solidified the label's reputation and they ventured into the avant-garde as well with "Free London" projects like The Eidetic Band, Ladywoodsman, Rob Mullender and Wooden Spoon. What makes the label really cohesive is that even their most outré offerings link back to some kind of folk tradition. The label has a massive 2007 planned, so we thought we might catch label owner Mark Morris between breaths and have a chat.

Terrascope-Online: Who is involved with Bo' Weavil and when did the label come into existence?

Bo' Weavil: Bo’ Weavil is just myself, and obviously the artists involved. It came into existence in November 2004 with the release of Henry Flynt’s records 'Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Vol 1 & 2' and 'I Don't Wanna'. The first idea for the label was to reissue the Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, but Folkways cannot license this material, as they have licensed the majority of it from smaller old 78 labels. So the Flynt records were next in line in my head, so I made contact with Locust and they were totally up for it.

It's quite unusual for a label to have a twin focus on the retrospective and the current. What led you to decide on that as the label's stated mission?

I basically wanted to run a label that dealt with the music I feel most passionately about, so for me that meant reissuing records that are hard to get on vinyl, and dealing with contemporary music as well. But also there are a few labels that also do the same today…Locust and Time-Lag spring to mind.

Read more here.

Tanakh CD for Camera Obscura

2006-12-28T23:12:00.000-08:00

Camera Obscura is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of the latest Tanakh CD "Saunders Hollow", a sister record to the Alien8 release "Ardent Fevers", featuring the same musicians, but focusing on the songs and vocals of member Michele Poulos. This is the first release by Tanakh not to be on Alien8, and we feel privileged to have it. Mail order copies will be available from around 08 Jan 07, and the release has a street date of 14 Feb 06 (Happy Valentine Day folks!). For goodies, check out the links after the description below:

Recorded the week before Ardent Fevers (already being hailed by critics as one of the best releases of 2006), in the same studio, with the same engineer (Bryan Hoffa), and with the same cast of musicians, Saunders Hollow, is not a collection of out-takes from those sessions, but a fully realised sister record to Ardent Fevers. Growing out of the song-writing explorations of Michele Poulos and Jesse Poe, Saunders Hollow is a record focusing on the songs of Poulos, who gave them to Poe in the form of thumb-strummed singer/songwriter demos. The results form a female Yin to the male Yang of recent Tanakh work. From the opening seconds of Poe's tortured guitar squalling to the final seconds of fading footsteps, bowed bass and saw that seal the record, the listener is treated to a million sounds all gently gelling into the world of sonic beauty we have come to expect from Tanakh, except for one thing…Tanakh in their ever changing exploration of sound have placed the lead vocals and songwriting in the ladybird hands of bassist and erstwhile backing vocalist Michele Poulos, leaving Poe in the musician/producer seat, dividing Poulos' previous backing vocal duties between himself and Isobel Campbell. What results is warm bouquet of songs that range from poppy-jazz, through renaissance remembrances, sweet folk, to dark drones and dreamy electronics and even straight up raunchy blues. Saunders Hollow is a place full of inviting mystery and rich texture, with musical twists and turns of every type, leaving the listener in a state of remembrance of all things past, like a stroll amongst Proustian Gardens. Gentle bass, scorching electric guitars, lilting tablas, Asian-strummed ukuleles, swirling electronics, lamenting violins, pulsing vibes, regal harpsichords, gospel organs and juke-joint pianos, sex-driven saxophones, folky acoustic guitars, sound-scaped lap steels, pulsing drums, and honeyed vocals grow together in an immense garden of sound and color that populates the dream landscape of Saunders Hollow.

About the band:

Tanakh is the banner for music written and improvised by a collective of musicians; music that is focused towards beauty and experimentation within structure instead of towards a particular musical genre or style. In the last six or so years this revolving collective has included a large number of musicians headed up by principle songwriter Jesse Poe. Although currently residing in Florence, Italy, Poe comes from a background of American rural music. His great-grandfather wrote country ballads and his great aunts and uncle had a live radio program broadcast out of Indiana. Tanakh has released a series of critically acclaimed CDs for the Alien8 label including "Villa Claustrophobia" (2002), "Dieu Deuil" and "s/t" (2004) and "Ardent Fevers" (2006).

Press quotes on previous outings:

"Opulent and low key, gilded and grimy, humid and gorgeous." Ian Penman on "Villa Claustrophobia" for The Wire, July 2002.

"Enhanced, groove-centered propulsion punctuated by the frequent Muscle Shoals-style horns, dustbowl lap steel, and a surprising abundance of hypercharged, Crazy Horse guitar soloing." Pitchfork reviewing "Ardent Fevers", April 06

Tanakh on MySpace

Michele Poulos on MySpace

MP3 From this Release on this C-O Page

Black Sun Ensemble CD out in the World

2006-12-28T23:00:00.000-08:00

Jeez, it seems like forever since I updated this blog, partly due to inertia and partly due to the damn slow loading of the blogger control panel over my VSAT connection. It seems much improved over the magnificent Firefox 2.0, so expect regular updates from now on. Since the last update, we've released the latest Black Sun Ensemble CD "Bolt of Apollo" and folks seems to be liking it OK. Here are some reviews:

Ptolemaic Terrascope
High Bias
Psychotropic Zone

It's ready for mail order from the Camera Obscura Web Site, or all good stores and etailers now.

Release notes can be found here. Links to MP3s can be found here.

New Black Sun Ensemble CD Cover Art

2006-09-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon - New Black Sun Ensemble CD "Bolt of Apollo"

2006-09-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

Camera Obscura Records is proud to celebrate Black Sun Ensemble's 20th anniversary with the release of their 11th studio release, "Bolt of Apollo". A mostly instrumental album, "Bolt of Apollo" effectively fuses the sun-baked, raga-esque qualities of the Ensemble with other influences ranging from British Invasion, progressive rock and ambient music. As always, the common thread is the electrifying guitar work of Jesus Acedo.

Recorded and mixed at SlowBurn studios, Black Sun Ensemble takes another giant step forward with this all instrumental recording. Members of Tucson's Sun Zoom Spark return with guitarist/honcho Jesus Angel del Paz (a.k.a. BSE founder Jesus Acedo) to follow up 2003's "Starlight" CD. In addition to the returning line-up, Bolt of Apollo features power-house drummer Ernie Mendoza and some guitarwork by former Sidewinder's guitarist, Rich Hopkins.
The material presented in "Bolt of Apollo" is extraordinary. From the middle-eastern meditations of "The Shining One" and "The Mecurial Incense of Melquiades" to the progressive explosiveness of "Heart of the Master" and "Scarlet Woman", to the ethnic-rock fusion of "St. Cecilia", "Bolt of Apollo" showcases fiery performances from the Ensemble while, as always, featuring mind-blowing fret work by guitar wizard Acedo. This synthesis of styles led one writer for the Austin Chronicle to describe Black Sun Ensemble as "...absolutely, amazingly, singular in the world of rock music."

"Bolt of Apollo" is also an enhanced CD with a video encoded onto each disc to be played in any PC or Macintosh computer. The video for "Jewel of the Seven Stars" from the "Starlight" CD, was directed by former Cesare's Dog vocalist Jonathan Levitt and shot on location in Beijing China.

Artwork for the release was created by Chicago artist Ben Johnston. The layout tells the story of the Daphne who is kidnapped by the trickster Baphomet. The sun-god Apollo hears her cries for help and vanquishes Baphomet with an arrow, the Bolt of Apollo. Before Baphomet dies, he curses Apollo with an eclipse -turning the sun black. The layout also features poetry by Acedo to accompany each track of the album.

New Reviews of Christian Kiefer CD!

2006-09-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

Here:

Brainwashed E-zine

Red Alert E-Zine

td.

Winter at C-O Acres

2006-09-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

Finally got images to upload again. Damn VSAT broadband. A recent snap up the front drive at sunrise:

Lucky Bishops CD Now Available for Mail Order

2006-08-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

Here are details of our latest release, the third slice of magnificent UK psych-pop from Dorset's finest, and the first on Camera Obscura. If you like the Green Pajamas, Dipsomaniacs or Lazily Spun, this release may be for you!

Artist: The Lucky Bishops
Title: Unexpect the Expected
Cat No: CAM076CD (13 tracks, 51:21 mins)
About the band: British pop-psych magicians The Lucky Bishops have been together for over ten years and have released two prior, critically acclaimed, albums on the Bevis Frond's Woronzow label (Rubric in the US) – a self-titled debut (2000) and "Grimstone" (2002). They've played at Terrastock festivals in London and Boston, SXSW in Austin Texas, shows in New York including CBGB’s, as well as many gigs at Alan McGee’s Poptones nights in Notting Hill in London and have toured Europe extensively. As Trouser Press put it: "the quartet of Luke Adams, Rich Murphy, Tom Hughes and Al Strawbridge come not from one of the urban centers of cool Britannia but from rural Dorset in the West Country. Their hook-laden blend of power-pop and neo-psychedelia pays close attention to the unfashionable concept of musicianship and shows an unfashionable range of influences that look beyond the often homogeneous and parochial sounds of the time."

About the album: It's been a long time between drinks for fans of the eclectic UK psychedelic/power-pop band The Lucky Bishops, but the lads' self-produced third album ‘Unexpect the Expected’ is now ready to storm the planet after a lengthy gestation period in the Dorset countryside. Inspired by the experience of living together in a haunted, rat infested, coastal cottage for four years, the band have written a collection of songs drawing on power-pop ("London Lounge", "Out of the Hole"), psych-pop ("The Cake and the Crumbs", "Old Women Laugh", "The Witches"), folk-rock ("K2", "No Worries") and even Tropicalia ("Guia de Conversacion") to create the unique blend found on this album. Recording on 8-, 16- and 24-track, the band have deployed their usual psych-pop/harmony foundations but added extra dimensions to the sonic weave to create deeper, more visceral structures. Typical of past releases, the Lucky Bishops split the song writing and lead vocals four ways over an instrumental palette of Hammond organ, piano, chiming valve driven guitars, glutinous bass and flowing and tumbling drums. It's unlikely a finer psych-pop record will be released this year.

Track List: Out of the Hole - The Pilot's Gone - Guia de Conversacion – Witches – Stives - London Lounge - Cake and the Crumbs - Upon the Mount - I Must Destroy My Brain - K2 - Old Women Laugh - The Leaves - No Worries

Personnel:
Richard Murphy: Guitar, lead vocals on four tracks.
Tom Hughes: Keyboards, lead vocals on three tracks.
Alan Strawbridge: Bass, lead vocals on four tracks.
Luke Adams plays Drums, lead vocals on two tracks.

Press for previous LB releases:

"This stunning classic-pop debut offers so much" – Mojo
"Sublime, melodic pop" – Magnet
"Upbeat, pulsating, innovative and brilliant" - Classic Rock Magazine

Check out MP3s: Go to http://www.cameraobscura.com.au/ and select "Sounds" from the menu.

Price US$15.00/AU$22.00 including shipping. Paypal to adale@tpgi.com.au or email us at adale@tpgi.com.au for other options.

You Know the Drugs are Working When...

2006-08-05T20:22:00.000-07:00

New Reviews for Ptolemaic Terrascope On-line

2006-08-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

Latest reviews for Ptolemaic Terrascope On-line:

United Bible Studies - "The Northern Lights and the Northern Dark"
The North Sea - "Underneath the Jesus Tree"
Anthony Milton - "The End of This Short Road"

Random Quote generator from the North Sea review:

His acoustic music exists in balance with nature, containing no more orless ego than is necessary for its completion and dissemination. A lot of newfolk music screams for attention like a precocious child at an adult gathering:"look at my reference points ma, look at the quirky bohemian construct with which I choose to present my art, da". Like the Jeweled Antler collective, Rose operates by stealth – launching hushed waves of beauty under the radar; and using natural locations to build his tone chapels.

Christian Kiefer CD Reviewed in Pitchfork

2006-07-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

A nice review of "Czar Nicholas Is Dead" by Matthew Murphy here:

New Reviews for Ptolemaic Terrascope On-Line

2006-07-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

Latest reviews for Ptolemaic Terrascope On-line:

Joesphine Foster's "A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing" on Locust
Tanakh's "Ardent Fevers" on Alien8 Recordings
Nick Castro & The Young Elders "Come Into Our House" on SAAH
Buffalo's "Dead Forever" on Aztec Records

Random quote generator, from the Tanakh review:

Centrepiece 'Still Trying to Find You Home' conjures with Townes Van Zandt melancholy before exploding into ragged Crazy Horse glory. Gratuitous soloing has never sounded so central to the heart of the matter. Elsewhere, 'Winter Song' is elegant UK-style folk rock co-written with Terrascope touchstone and Kitchen Cynic Alan Davidson, and 'Take and Read' pulls out all the stops for and epic piece that takes a folk motif and builds layer on layer of instrumentation on it before again erupting into the twin guitar beard-rock stratosphere.

Article on MYMWLY Records on Deep Water

2006-07-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

I have scribed an inteview with Michael Donnelly of the prolific Australia undeground label MYMWLY (Musicyourmindwillloveyou in full) for Deep Water magazine and if you so desire you can read it here.

6majik9 live in Sydney:

First Review of our Christian Kiefer CD

2006-06-27T23:21:00.000-07:00

Read the Psychotropic Zone review here. It's not really an album that is up Santtu's alley, and I don't agree it's as dark as he contends it is, but it's good to have press starting to emerge:

http://tinyurl.com/fb8on

A Review of the New Nick Castro CD

2006-06-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

A version of this is now posted in the Ptolemaic Terrascope's May Reviews.

Nick Castro & the Young Elders - "Come Into Our House"
(CD on Strange Attractors Audio House)

Here is a something I've been listening to a lot lately - a CD (soon to be double LP in Europe) that could well end up being one of the year's finest (whether it is recognised as such or not in the fickle world of neo/freak/folk is another matter). Nick achieved some kind of breakthrough on 2005's "Further From Grace", which I summed up elsewhere to be "the kind of album that refuses - and is in fact demeaned by - easy reference points in the present and past, existing as a sui generis masterpiece of new acoustic music, and a model for what might fly in the future to replace to already tattered and stained flag of “freak folk”. British, American and Middle-Eastern traditions are respectfully drawn together, and it’s difficult to imagine improving on any decision made on the record". On "Further From Grace" Nick was backed by "The Poison Tree", which included Josephine Foster and members of Espers. For "Come Into Our House" he has gathered "The Young Elders" - a fine assemblage of musicians including John Contreras, who is so effective on the latest Current 93 CD; B'eirth, driving force behind In Gowan Ring and Birch Book, and various members of Cul de Sac and Damo Suzuki's Network. This new line-up has allowed Castro to achieve a vision that is cinematic in scale and faultless in execution.

The disc opens with "Winding Tree", which echoes the mellow 70s UK folk of the Village Thing label, and The Sun Also Rises album in particular, with its intertwining male and female vox and recorder. A beautiful Renbourn-ish guitar pattern introduces the exquisitely-wrought "Sleeping in a Dream", which transitions from a dreamy west coast singer-songwriter vibe, to a hypnagogic percussive conclusion. Taste and restraint, rather than self-involved quirkiness, is thankfully the key here. The work of John Renbourn is also recalled by the stately, almost medieval, instrumental "Picollina", on which Castro lays down a stunning guitar motif which is gradually picked up by more and more instruments. The fluent folk-rock of "One I Love" (a Jean Ritchie cover) could be a lost Trees out-take, with long-time Castro collaborator Wendy Watson contributes some fine vocal work, and swathes of beautifully phrased, multi-tracked electric guitar from Castro tripping off into psychedelic realms. The CD then takes a distinctly Middle-Eastern turn with the snaking instrumental "Attar" and the shimmering and suspenseful dune-scape of "Voices from the Mountains". The latter suggests that Castro may have a career in film music should he choose to go that route. More fine song-craft in "Back to the Coast" leads into the first of two lengthy workouts. The first, "Lay Down Your Arms" is a communal acid mantra of monumental proportions, its raga structure evoking Monterey and the birth of the late 60s Bay Area ballroom scene, as well as German touchstones like Amon Duul 2 and Can. The second, "Promises Unbroken", is progressive folk of the Can variety; Contreras' cello introducing a caravanserai of a piece with many stop-overs in exotic destinations. It's a compositional tour-de-force, and a fitting way to conclude a CD with which Castro signals his arrival as a major progressive folk force independent of any scene, or place in time.

(Released 27 Jun 06)

Lucky Bishop MP Goodies

2006-06-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

From their forthcoming Camera Obscura CD "Expect the Unexpected".

London Lounge (2.998 MB)

Witches (3.304 MB)

And visit their MySpace site

Goal! Goal! Goal!

2006-06-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

If Australia progresses no further in this World Cup (though it seems likely now that they may get through to the second round) I'll take the memory of the last 10 minutes of the game v. Japan to my grave, and pull it out for inspection whenever I feel like giving up on something that seems insurmountable.

Lucky Bishops Cover Now Revised

2006-06-09T20:07:00.001-07:00

New, equally disturbing cover for the Lucky Bishops CD. In reality, there will be four to choose from on one side on an eight-panel gatefold.

New Current 93 CD Reviewed

2006-06-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

It's finally here! Current 93's Black Ships have landed, and here are my excited scribblings on their arrival:

Review of Current 93's "Black Ships Ate the Sky" for the Ptolemaic Terrascope

New Reviews for Ptolemaic Terrascope On-Line

2006-06-03T01:02:00.000-07:00

Verbiage now posted on these fine releases on the Digitalis label:

KYRGYZ -- SELF-TITLED
HUSH ARBORS -- SELF-TITLED
WITH THROATS AS FINE AS NEEDLES -- SELF-TITLED
BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD -- GOODBYE

Go here to read the reviews.

Random quote generator:

Although recorded outside, the tracks evoke enclosed spaces like lost caves and underground caverns and the air and water that runs through them. Occasionally one gets the impression that the quartet have taped the keys down and nodded off, but closer listening reveals small quanta of sound - perhaps extraneous, perhaps intended - hovering around the central drone core. The listener is constantly challenged to identify sounds – is that a beer bottle falling over? – did someone just trip over the whole recording rig? - and so forth, but in the end, it becomes a work about the creation of meditation spaces, and their precise contour mapping. - From review of With Throats as Fine as Needles CD

Veronica Mars Renewed

2006-05-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

So, miracles do happen, there is a Santa Claus and an Easter Bunny, and we'll be getting a third season of Veronica Mars, albeit one with a ticking-time bomb of a perfomance-based existence clause embedded in its chest. Considering the (albeit highly intriguing and watchable) mess that was the second season's through-mystery I'd say they dodged an entire automatic pistol clip full of bullets. The concluding - resolving- episode rushed to a goth-noir psychodrama of a climax that seemed to exist sui generis rather than as an outcome of what had been set up before, and I wasn't convinced by Beaver as the psychopath, though don't doubt that there were signals of underlying psycho-sexual problems earlier in hi relationship with Mac. The thing with the plane bomb and with Keith's highly predictable escpae from that seemed cheesy and overplotted. But then the theme of the season seemed to be that too much plot is never enough.

On the good side, pretty amazing continuity throughout, sets up in Season 1 paid off in Season 2, and there are few series that make me use so much of my cognition to keep track of everything. They need to make better use of their strengths in Season 3, like the underused Fank Capra Jr (Weevil) and phase out the problematic and unconvincing Wallace (sorry man), unless they have a decent arc planned for him, and his acting chops can carry it off - not optimistic! Bring back Duncan, there is no way he looks like he is in Australia.

College Years...bring it on.

Next Project - The Lucky Bishops

2006-05-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

While getting the Christian Kiefer CD out into the world, we'll also be starting work on our next CD soon, "Unexpect the Expected" by The Lucky Bishops. I'll get MP3s happening soon, but here's the rather disturbing cover:

New Reviews for Ptolemaic Terrascope On-line

2006-05-13T18:27:00.000-07:00

Latest scribblage here:

The Darling Downs - "How Can I Forget This Heart Of Mine?" CD on Carrot Top Records
Two United Bible Studies CDs on Barl Fire and Deserted Village
Painting Petals on Planet Ghost LP on Time-Lag
Two Bjerga/Iversen CD-Rs on Barl Fire and Musicyoormindwillloveyou
Agitated Radio Pilot - "Your Turn to Go it Alone" CD-R on Rusted Rail

Random Quote Generator:

"'Smoke-Filled Mirrors' forms part of the duo prolific 2005 work, being
recorded and mixed in June least year as part of the 'Hovden Tapes' sessions.
One could almost consider it an EP, since it is comprised of a single track
eponymous of around 27 minute's duration. It starts will a cloud of electronics,
oscillating drones, nether-shortwave voices and associated detritus conjure a
dysfunctional machine-shop ambience. Odd, whirs, clanks, rattles and the sounds
of broken machines inhabit the sound stage like the ghosts of impending failure
that flow through the wires and fluid lines of a badly maintained third-world
passenger airliner as the clock of its existence winds down. Warning lights go
on and off, caution tones bleep but there is no one around to hear them but us,
and we don't care. Signal waves roll onto tape in the black box of this grim
industrial symphony, and eventually all the components begin to scream in unison
and they figure out their number is up. There is power here, and a certain
industrial revolution beauty, but no peace, and all of the possible resolutions
obey the third law of thermodynamics. The machine dies, and its ghost moves on"
- from the Bjerga/Iversen round-up

Christian Kiefer CD Now Out

2006-05-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo! Hi folks,

We're pretty excited to have Christian on the label, since we're big fans of his three CDs for Extreme Records, two sublime singer-songwriter works "Welcome to Hard Times" and "Medicine Show" and one instrumental guitarscape work "Exodust". He's also got a recent collaborative CD with our very own Sharron Kraus out on Fontana ("The Black Dove"). The first of what we hope to be a series of releases, both instrumental and song-based.

Artist: Christian Kiefer
Title: Czar Nicholas Is Dead
Cat No: CAM075CD (10 tracks, 49:02 min)

About the album: Some ideas are difficult to dispense with. Were you to ask Christian Kiefer why he fixated on Russia, and on a particularly grisly period in the country's history, he would probably be unable to answer. After all, Kiefer lived (and still lives) in a quiet, unassuming, and decidedly American suburb in Northern California, a far cry from the North Asian continent of his imagination. But it was, in fact, Russia that had become the object of his curiosity and like Franza Kafka's Amerika, a novel similarly fixated upon a geographical location that the author had no firsthand knowledge of, Kiefer set out to address his interest through art.

The end result of that interest is "Czar Nicholas Is Dead", a soundtrack to a tundra wasteland filled with lonely soldiers, ornate towers crumbling into ruin, and desolate, blood-soaked snowscapes. An essentially ambient project with minimal instrumentation, "Czar Nicholas Is Dead" captures Russia as a fever dream, a strange and disorienting place that lay on no map, but rather resides entirely in the author's imagination.

On the one hand, the subject of Kiefer's project is a strange one to be sure, particularly since most of his recorded output-including the similarly epic and minimalist instrumental project "Exodust" (2002) -has been rooted strongly in American soil. But Kiefer's work has always also been rooted in history and in academic and intellectual pursuits. His Ph.D. work at the University of California at Davis explores the intersection of history and the arts (particularly literature) and "Czar Nicholas Is Dead" falls perfectly within his primary field of interest, even if the geographical location has shifted off the North American continent. For research, Kiefer turned to thick volumes on the assassination of the Romanoff family, the tradition of Russian folk music, and to early Russian silent film.

Kiefer brought in a handful of his favorite musicians and asked them to improvise with him live in the studio with a handful of simple instructions. The material was then worked over further in the studio, edited, rearranged, and produced, often with additional parts being added or subtracted as the musical force of the album began to reveal itself. The end result is part collective improvisation on a conceptual and musical theme, and part constructed and composed musical work.

Press for Christian's work:

"A beautiful musical evocation of a page of Americana. Environmental recordings and electronics wrap up a slow-changing bed of loops consisting of simple folk guitar lines, banjo, accordion, and voices (both singing and reciting)." - All Music Guide on "Exodust" (Extreme Records 2002)

"Christian Kiefer's music brings the listener directly in contact with a new sonic landscape. The atmosphere is crusty and old, hearkening back to a time when mine shafts dotted the forests. I grew up in the same part of the world and I am intimate with its shape. Kiefer captures it beautifully; his music is the real deal." - Terry Riley reviewing "Welcome to Hard Times" (Extreme Records 2000)

"I have one thing to say about Christian Kiefer: It's GREAT to hear new music!" - Thurston Moore

Check out MP3s: Go to http://www.christiankiefer.com/czar.htm

For ordering, go to the Camera Obscura web site and follow the ordering links

More Details on Christian Kiefer Project

2006-04-22T03:42:00.000-07:00

Lots of information on the upcoming Camera Obscura CD here, including high-resolution MP3s of a couple of tracks.

http://www.christiankiefer.com/czar.htm

I'll get around to updating the actual Camera Obscura site over the next few days. Gotta figure out some timelines, release dates and so on.

Christian Kiefer CD

2006-04-22T03:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. Hard at work on various projects, inclduing the next Camera Obscura CD "Czar Nicholas is Dead" by Christian Kiefer. We've admired the lad for some time, and are honored to be releasing this disc, which is minimalist and sound-scapey along the lines of his earlier work "Exodust". Hopefully this project will be the first of a series with Christian. For those not familiar with his thing, go here and poke around with a stick:

http://www.christiankiefer.com

We've finished up the graphics now, and will put the CD in to manufacture next week. Always a fun time - seeing how things turn out. Here's the front cover.

More soon.

Fell CD Getting Some Love

2006-04-22T03:22:00.000-07:00

Some nice reviews out there of CAM074CD. This is our favourite:

http://www.fakejazz.com/fake/archives/2006/04/fell_-_fell_cam.php

Steve Rybecki, you are a legend.

South African Psych Article Posted on Deep Water

2006-03-20T20:01:00.000-08:00

Kevin Moist has been kind enough to post part one of my inchoate ramblings on SA 70s rock on his Deep Water web site:

South African Head Music Pt1 - Astral Africans and Freedom's Truth

Intro to hopefully whet your appetite:

It’s difficult to imagine a more unlikely place for a fertile “head music” scene to emerge than South Africa in the late 60s. With racism and nationalism conjuring a cloud over social and artistic expression in a land isolated from the main stream of Western culture and commerce, it must have seemed that precious stones and metal were all the expedient West wanted from them. But natural forces respect none of these constraints, and the Summer of Love was a force of nature, a vibration that shook the world, with few places untouched by its promise of a passageway through the cosmic eye — Love, Peace and Understanding a possibility if you made the jump. A fertile sub-culture in South Africa did make the jump, creating a unique body of recorded psychedelia and progressive rock. But unlike that other Great Southern Land, Australia, not much escaped to the rest of the world. Unsupported at home, and unable to export their thing, the South Africa head bands generally winked briefly into existence, released what they could, and were gone. Almost.

New Reviews Now at PT Online

2006-03-20T15:17:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to my latest scribings for the Ptolemaic Terrascope:

Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood "Canisanubis" on MYMWLY CD-R Label
One Ensemble of Daniel Padden "Live at VPRO" on Brainwashed Handmade

Random quote from the Brothers review:

Free magic constructs draw up plans for a forest temple in lines of light and warding while demon forces circle inwards to the hypnagogic chimes of 'Preying in Circles' which definitely conjures the feel of mid-period AMM. 'Augustifolia' is like the Supreme Dicks stripped back to folk, blended with elements of middle-Eastern jazz and surrounded with ghost voices. True to the theme of this release, every time you think you have a grasp of its structure, everything runs through your fingers like quicksilver and heads off somewhere else. 'The Silk
Wolf Whose Arrow Spirit Speaks' is a centre of sorts for 'Canisanubis', standing
perpetually on the verge of coalescing into a Can inspired groove, but staying
tantalisingly free of doing so, thus remaining master of its own destination.

Veronica Mars Withdrawal

2006-02-26T16:45:00.000-08:00

At Camera Obscura Acres we're suffering from Veronica Mars withdrawal, as the show has going into another hiatus, a mere two shows after the main Xmas one. I hear the last two episodes didn't rate very well, so please give this show your support! It's brilliant and fragile and could be gone in the blink of eye, lost in the conjoining of the UPN and WB networks into the WC (or whatever) quite literally.

Next episode should be 15 March in the US. My Bit Torrent waits impatiently to fire up.

Goths Give Fell CD Thumbs Up!

2006-02-26T16:38:00.000-08:00

Check out Gothtronic Web Review here.

Fell from Colorado is the side project of Josh Wambeke, also known of the
spaecrock outfit Phineas Gage. The music of Fell is dreamy psychedelic pop. The
songs are experimental, mostly electronic but very atmospheric, with all sorts
of subtle additions. Furthermore they have a nice and warm guitarsound and
strong hints towards wave-doom bands like Spiritualized, Joy Division or The
Cure during the Distintegration times. Their spirit wanders through the music of
Fell without being able to exactly put your finger on it. Spacepop wouldn’t be
such a bad description for the music of Fell. The echoeing and reverb
guitarsound and dreamy vocals give the electronics a totally different feel and
effect. This is one of those lovely records you will spin on a lost Sunday
afternoon. So i will have another listen to this record again now.

Thanks Teknoir!

Storm at C-O Acres

2006-02-26T16:32:00.000-08:00

Snapped from the back porch:

Latest Reviews for Terrascope On-Line

2006-02-15T22:54:00.000-08:00

Here are links to some of my latest scribings on new releases for the Terrascope UK site:

The Clear Spots CD "Mansion in the Sky" on Deep Water
Phosphene CD "The Plum, the Orange and the Matchbox" on Secret Eye

Random quote from the Clear Spots review:

Beer, bong and barbeque are probably the main influences on the stomping
'Mud Boots', which sounds like some dazed 70s mid-Western garage psychonauts
worshipping at the font of Sabbath while cutting their soon-to-be-lost private
pressing. It has a spectacularly saturated sound that rewards high volume
listening (the sessions were recorded on a good old cassette portastudio).
'Three Dignitaries' is typical of the whole, ploughing a furrow of drone while
occasionally switching of the engine to admire pastoral surrounds. It's damn
near bucolic.

Deep Water E-Zine Goes Live

2006-02-10T01:30:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting for this for a while. Great to see Kevin Moist's fine fanzine back from the dead as a web-zine.

They've run an interview I did with Nick Castro, which is nice. You can find it on the main page. Also a recipe for good old Aussie damper bread!

Go here:

Deep Water

Latest Reviews For Terrascope On-Liine

2006-02-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

Here are links to some of my latest scribings on new releases for the Terrascope UK site:

Fursaxa CD "Amulet" on Last Visible Dog
Spiral Joy Band CD "Lullabies for Jeff Dean" on VHF

Random quote from the Spiral Joy Band review:

'Lullaby 2' is insanely long at nearly 42 minutes, evolving from the deep
listening trance space created by Gangloff's esraj, to some Last Chord at the
End of the Universe action as furious percussion and shrieking shenais push the
track over the edge of sanity, and an infinite number of howler monkeys toss
their typewriters out of their trees in admiration and sympathy. By its
conclusion, most listeners' nerve endings are quite possibly going to be arcing
like downed power lines.

Fell CD Now Out!

2006-02-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

First release for 2006! We're excited! (Then again we're an excitable bunch.)

Artist: Fell
Title: (self-titled)
Cat No: CAM074CD (12 tracks, 47:55 approx)
About the album: Fell is a new project by Josh Wambeke of the Denver, Colorado psychedelic pop duo Phineas Gage (last heard in 2000 on their Camera Obscura CD "Reconsidered"). The band began life as a series of four-track tapes culled from a backlog of Josh Wambeke's demos - experimental odds and ends deemed unsuitable for inclusion in the Phineas Gage repertoire due to their heavy usage of electronics and drum machines. When Wambeke's colleague in Gage, Patrick Porter, embarked on an extensive globe-trot and started on a series of solo releases, Wambeke set out to combine the existing electro-ambient feel of these demo tracks with the heavily-reverbed space guitars and layered, subterranean vocals that had comprised the Phineas Gage sound. Recruiting local drummer Josh Cedillo and friends Zac Hilman, and Mike Dewey, Wambeke purchased home recording equipment and spent the next year in his grandmother's basement recording the songs for a first Fell album. Heavy influences during the recordings included Joy Division and the Cure's "Disintegration".

As sessions for the album progressed, Wambeke took on more and more of the recording himself, the creation of the songs becoming a kind of therapy during a time of uncertainty and depression. A year's worth of basement sessions gave birth to this CD. A number of shows were played, but eventually Hilman and Dewey left the band for other ventures. Currently the group consists of Wambeke and Cedillo, who are continuing to record new songs for future releases. The Fell CD runs the gamut from psych to space to post-rock with nods in the direction of early new wave and ambient electronics but in the end it is the band's effortless song craft and precise arrangements that propel tracks like the hypnotic "Data-Backspace=Error", the melancholy "End Forever", the haunting "Vacant Song" and the sublime acoustic closer "Cause of Cancer" into hearts and stratospheres.

Press for Phineas Gage's "Reconsidered":

"Homegrown psychedelic offerings from Colorado duo…fuzzy guitars and emotional vocals show an affection for more recent drug rock like Spaceman 3 as well as the classics. Nice playing" - Scram Magazine #12

"Overall a great album, dreamy and expressive…these guys have a lot of promise" - LosingToday Magazine

"Phineas Gage's 'Reconsidered' is a Lo-Fi masterwork. Obviously recorded on a tiny or absent budget, the album nonetheless pleases the listener with sturdy yet fragile melodies. Reminds one of the 'Meddle' Floyd era, but without all the sound effects and long guitar solos. A beautiful, haunting, and unfortunately overlooked record." Howard Morris at http://www.psychedelic-music.net

"Criminally overlooked" – Ptolemaic Terrascope On-Line May 2005

Check out MP3s: Go to http://www.cameraobscura.com.au and follow the "Sounds" Link.
Also, there are three or four tracks at the Fell MySpace page:http://www.myspace.com/fellmusic

Email me about ordering direct from us!

Camera Obscura Acres - Photo for Today

2006-02-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

Rose walk coming along:

Camera Obscura Bookshelf/DVD Rack

2006-02-01T01:25:00.000-08:00

Currently reading the deeply twisted Iain M. Banks space opera-to-end-all-space operas "The Algebraist". Incredibly dark and incredibly funny, and the gas-giant inhabiting Dwellers are one of the greatest creations of modern Science Fiction. Nobody quite combines the galactic-scope with the writing skills in this field. Peter Hamilton has the scope, but writes pretty generically. It's been a dark ride so I'm hoping for some light at the end of the tunnel, but with Banks, that's not usually going to happen.

The Camera Obscura HQ home-theatre (ahem) is screening the Region 1 DVD release of the 1995/1996 series "American Gothic" which is totally more drugged out and noirish than I remember, even though the effects occasionally look a little dated. The box contains five of six eps that never screen so that is cool too. The transfer is a little grainy, but I guess they did the best with what they had, which probably didn't include original 35mm film positives, of maybe they just didn't want to spend the money. Still, it's sufficient.

Also screening, because "American Gothic" is not universally loved around here, is Season 3 of the (God-like genius of) "Homicide: Life on the Street", which is where they really settled into a full-season-order groove. Amazing look, writing, performances, and music selection. Not even approached in quality until The Wire and The Shield came out, and they only really exist because of cable. There is no way that "Homicide: Life on the Street" would be on USA network TV if it came out now.

Great Goblin Market Review on Dusted Site

2006-01-30T13:43:00.000-08:00

There is a great review of the new Goblin Market CD at Dusted. Read Mason Jones' review of "Haunted" for the prestigious e-zine here.

More details of this release can be found at the Camera Obscura web site by selecting the item from the new releases section on the right-hand side of the main page.

Releases for First Half of 2006/Carnival Compilation

2006-01-29T23:18:00.000-08:00

These are the discs I'm hoping to release in the first half of 2006. more details of the Fell release are further down the blog, and on the web site, and details of the other releases will be posted here as they get written up.

CAM074CD - Fell - s/t - Feb 06
CAM075CD - Christian Kiefer - "Czar Nicholas is Dead" - Feb/Mar 06
CAM076CD - Lucky Bishops - "Unexpect the Expected" - Mar/Apr 06
CAM077CD - Black Sun Ensemble - "Bolt of Apollo" - May 06

We're also working on a compilation on the theme of carnival for later in 2006. We've always thought of the traveling carnival as a sociological phenomenon that warps and shifts with whatever time period it is traveling through, existing as a conduit for freaks and misfits and hucksters to exploit and be exploited and as a metaphor for the beauty and terror of existence itself. "All human life is there" as someone once said. A mythological world of clowns and carnies, bearded ladies and strong men, dwarfs and giants, tent shows and side shows, arcades and Ferris wheels.

We were profoundly affected when we saw HBO's dust-bowl travelling carnival drama "Carnivale", but the planned compilation is not a tribute to that series. But if folks want to take away the dark magical realism of that series and use it as inspiration, that's more than OK. Tell the truth, we're just as influenced by the surreal world sketched by Jackson C. Frank in his astonishing song "My Name is Carnival". Might even call the compilation that. Or "In the Name of Carnival". Something like that.

Without being programmatic, the pieces we're looking for are probably along a song-based, psychedelic folk axis, with singer-songwriter, loner folk and experimental input also welcomed. And under five minutes, but that's totally open to suggestion and variation if good ideas are thrown at us. Enough material comes in and we'll expand beyond a single disc compilation, so pass on to whoever you think would be interested.

Contributors so far in alphabet order:
Above the Orange Trees
Devendra Banhart (tentative)
Nick Castro
Sean Connaughty (Salamander)
Current 93 (tentative)
Forgotten Works (Erik from Salamander)
Christian Kiefer
Sharron Kraus
Marissa Nadler
The North Sea (Brad Rose)
Marianne Nowottny
P.G. Six
Pothole Skinny
Alec Redfearn (and the Eyesores)
Timothy Renner
Terracid
Damien Youth

Get in touch if you are interested!

Lady and Bird CD

2006-01-29T01:38:00.000-08:00

I've only just discovered this 2003 CD, a collaboration between French chanteuse Keren Ann Zeidel and Icelandic pop star Bardi Johannsson, and it's simply extraordinary. It's incredibly French by virtue of Keren Ann's breathy vocal stylings and subtly strange also (no doubt) due to the Icelandic input. I feel already like I've known and loved this album all my life. It's mixture of oddness and accessibility is really interesting, and it's also a pretty outre artefact to have issued forth on a major label (EMI France) and I wish the majors were this adventurous in other territories. Many reviewers have noted the cover versions (altered images of Lou Reed's "Stephanie Says" and the MASH theme song "Suicide is Painless"), but these are not the main game - in fact the album would have been even stronger without them, ie focussing on the lady and bird dialogue concept running through the disc and culminating at the unforgettable final track "The Ballad of Lady and Bird".

Highly recommended, and obtainable from Amazon UK, USA and elsewhere, though best priced on Amazon UK, I think, especially with the rebate of VAT.

Latest Reviews for Terrascope On-Line

2006-01-29T01:19:00.000-08:00

If you feel so inclined, please check out some of my latest scribings on new releases for the Terrascope UK site:

Alligator Crystal Moth CD-R "Solis" on Musicyourmindwillloveyou
Xenis Emputae Travelling Band CD-R "Goat Willow" on Barl Fire
Gary Higgins "Red Hash" CD on Drag City

Random quote from the Gary Higgins review:

What Higgins and various members of Random Concept and the Wooden Wheel
created during roughly 40 hours of recording in February 1973 was and is
remarkable. 'Red Hash' (the name given to Higgins by fellow inmates while
he was on remand) is bearded-loner-psych-folk of the highest water. The
record starts with the signature rural sounds of' 'Thicker than a Smokey',
recent covered on the Six Organs of Admittance CD 'School of the Flower', and
it's the kind of track that would have been a major hit if Higgins had been part
of the West Coast singer-songwriter scene. Seemingly effortless melodic and
rhythmic structures flow like fine wine though the arteries and veins of this
music as the lyrics somewhat map out elements of the then-dying hippie
dream.

Fell CD coming in February

2006-01-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

Fell is a new project by Josh Wambeke of the Denver, Colorado psychedelic pop duo Phineas Gage (last heard in 2000 on their Camera Obscura CD "Reconsidered"). The band began life as a series of four-track tapes culled from a backlog of Josh Wambeke's demos - experimental odds and ends deemed unsuitable for inclusion in the Phineas Gage repertoire due to their heavy usage of electronics and drum machines. When Wambeke's colleague in Gage, Patrick Porter, embarked on an extensive globe-trot and started on a series of solo releases, Wambeke set out to combine the existing electro-ambient feel of these demo tracks with the heavily-reverbed space guitars and layered, subterranean vocals that had comprised the Phineas Gage sound. Recruiting local drummer Josh Cedillo and friends Zac Hilman, and Mike Dewey, Wambeke purchased home recording equipment and spent the next year in his grandmother's basement recording the songs for a first Fell album.

Heavy influences during the recordings included Joy Division and the Cure's "Disintegration". As sessions for the album progressed, Wambeke took on more and more of the recording himself, the creation of the songs becoming a kind of therapy during a time of uncertainty and depression. A year's worth of basement sessions gave birth to this CD. A number of shows were played, but eventually Hilman and Dewey left the band for other ventures. Currently the group consists of Wambeke and Cedillo, who are continuing to record new songs for future releases. The Fell CD runs the gamut from psych to space to post-rock with nods in the direction of early new wave and ambient electronics but in the end it is the band's effortless song craft and precise arrangements that propel tracks like the hypnotic "Data-Backspace=Error", the melancholy "End Forever", the haunting "Vacant Song" and the sublime acoustic closer "Cause of Cancer" into hearts and stratospheres

For more information, go here http://www.cameraobscura.com.au/obscura.htm and click on Catalog menu option, then click on 2006. Check out an MP3 on our Sounds page too.

Mail order date should be 02 Feb, and and then later in February release dates in various territories. We'll keep you updated!

Best Buy Eats America

2006-01-27T20:08:00.000-08:00

Best Buy Eats America. Read CTD supremo Patrick Monaghan's incisive analysis on the latest indie-destroying numbskulledness by the evildoers at Best Buy here:

http://sakistore.blogspot.com/

A fascinating and necessary debate.

Hey

2006-01-27T19:18:00.000-08:00