A pretty amazing week of new arrivals kicked off with the arrival of the beautiful thing pictured above; the Third Man/Revenant Paramount Records box set (Volume One, I should note). Lots to talk about there, not least the 800 tracks, and once I’ve had a deeper and more extensive listen I’ll try...
A pretty amazing week of new arrivals kicked off with the arrival of the beautiful thing pictured above; the Third Man/Revenant Paramount Records box set (Volume One, I should note). Lots to talk about there, not least the 800 tracks, and once I’ve had a deeper and more extensive listen I’ll try and blog about it properly.
At first, though, opening up the hefty wooden “Cabinet Of Wonder”, it’s the lavish aesthetic of the whole package that’s so startling; genuinely, the most lavish – and justifiably lavish – box set I’ve ever seen. One of the many great things about it is how it doesn’t present this music, nearly a hundred years old in many cases, in an Old-Weird-American way; as The Other. Instead, while there may well be plenty of music that sounds strange here, the wood, the upholstery, the lavish books of adverts, the vintage slickness, all assert that Paramount was a commercial operation, not some mystical conduit. They were, in fact, furniture upholsterers – something that Jack White, scholar of blues, the intersections between artifice and integrity, and premium upholstery, understands very well.
Other great new stuff here: New Bums are a duo of Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn, and this is a self-released seven (there’s an album due next year). Black Dirt Oak are a mighty freeform out-folk jamming collective featuring Steve Gunn, Nathan Bowles, Dave Shuford and various other NNCK-related outliers. Along with all the nice reissues in this batch, please also find some time for Buchikamashi (Japanese New Age) and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s lovely and noble clip in support of Greenpeace’s Peter Willcox.
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1 Harold Budd – Wind In Lonely Fences (1970-2011)
2 Black Dirt Oak – Wawayanda Patent (MIE Music)
3 New Bums – Slim Volume (NB)
4 Various Artists – The Rise And Fall Of Paramount Records Volume One: 1917-1927 (Third Man/Revenant)
5 Bruce Springsteen – High Hopes (Columbia)
6 Red River Dialect – Live at Cafe Oto (Red River Dialect)
7 Evian Christ – Salt Carousel (Tri Angle)
8 Brigitte Fontaine – Est… Folle (Superior Viaduct)
9 Brigitte Fontaine – Comme A La Radio (Superior Viaduct)
10 Metronomy – I’m Aquarius (Because)
11 Lonnie Holley – Keeping A Record Of It (Dust-To-Digital)
12 Buchikamashi – Out Of Body Experience (Fort Evil Fruit)
13 Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Wig Out At Jagbags (Domino)
14 Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Black Captain (Revised For Peter Willcox) (Greenpeace USA)
15 The Necks & Evan Parker – Late Junction Sessions (BBC Radio 3)
16 Various Artists – A Spacebomb Family Album (Spacebomb)
17 Baldruin & Das Ensemble Der Zittrigen Glieder – Baldruin & Das Ensemble Der Zittrigen Glieder (Fort Evil Fruit)
18 Roger Eno – Little Things Left Behind: 1988–1998 (All Saints)
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20 Tinariwen – Emmaar (Anti-)
21 Matt Kivel – Double Exposure (Olde English Spelling Bee)
22 Holden – The Inheritors (Border Community)
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