Okraïna #17 : Stefan Neville & Greg Malcolm – Don’t Drown

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STEFAN NEVILLE & GREG MALCOLM
Don’t Drownokraïna #17 – double 10’’

Two mavericks, out on the weekend, trying to make it pay…

Maverick was the word that came to mind when I listened to this music. A slightly wayward independence of spirit and outlook. The word originally referred to an unbranded male calf that had become separated from the herd (because Texan rancher Sam Maverick was so negligent in his branding – ‘if it ain’t branded, it’s a Maverick’). But Sam’s grandson Maury Maverick gave it a different twist in his short but stormy Congressional career as the only liberal member of the Southern Democratic caucus. Maury was so out of step with his own folks that he not only voted in 1937 to make lynching a federal crime, he even addressed the House to condemn the practice as barbaric. His attempt to ban racist mob murder sadly failed, but it’s that refusal to march in step which distinguishes the two ‘mavericks’ who made this record.

Who would attempt to combine cunning ethnological forgery, Scottish folk songs, claw-hammer guitar, untutored horn-tootling, elastically relaxed drumming and garage electronic fuckery? Only Greg and Stefan, high on sea, sunshine and mis-judged micro-dosing – that’s who. ‘Don’t drown’ was offered as practical advice during the self-described ‘Yellow Submarine’ phase of making this record. And while they managed to avoid literally doing so (phew), they sound here like they got pretty ‘deep in’ to an Octopus’s sound world all their own. This surprisingly clear analogue recording has just enough Bikini Bottom grit to ensure traction. The tunes are inviting, and the sonic disruptions are too good-natured and goofy to upset even the most delicate digestion.

The sessions have had a couple of years to marinate, courtesy of some pandemic, and are here offered in that most Archducal of vinyl formats, the double ten inch. What are you waiting for, a side of Crabby Patties? Get your water-wings and dive in (unless you’re tripping)!
— Bruce Russell (The Dead C) Lire la suite

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Sat. 21.01.2023 – OKRAÏNA 10 YEARS PARTY – Atelier 210

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Amarante-Cerisier
Maurizio Amarante + Marine Cerisier

Stills
Pak Yan Lau + Audrey Lauro (feat. Beata Szparagowska)

La Maison d’amour
Léonore Boulanger + Mam-Li Merati + Matthieu Ferrandez

MINI EXPO
Gwénola Carrère

MU (RADIO CAMPUS) 20 YEARS PARTY

DJ Bonzai Tarzan – Rupert Pupkin – Grokokok

> details <        > tickets <
(pay what you can / 10 €)

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Okraïna #16 : Ben Pritchard – Up in Air

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BEN PRITCHARD
Up in Airokraïna #16 – double 10’’

After a near decade of solo and collaborative projects, Up in Air is Ben Pritchard‘s most confident foray into songwriting yet, nestling lopsided experimentation into a bed of lowslung blues and reflective folk.

Up in Air is sewn from threads of everyday life: trails of thought, small stories and conversations with his daughter. Collecting, layering and condensing the world around him, his musings spill out in a palimpsest that renders both the material and metaphysical world. From describing a time where he inadvertently found himself on a hunting trip, recalling stories from doing role play and drawing together with his daughter, or scribing observations on the strange dedications people make in their lives, he explores the banal and the fantastical; the whimsical and the serious; the light and dark. Each line, aphorism or vignette carries with it weight that is looking to free itself, to embrace the impossibility of life distilled into simpler parameters.

Ben’s music acts as a motor for his words, weaving wistful melodic mantras and creaking guitar lines in and out as each song finds its feet. Although the album finds a rich array of influences dancing in an awkward balance, the emotive register of the music drinks from the fountain of the US rock continuum, with Supreme Dicks’ uneasy indie, Low’s slow unfurling grace and Neil Youngs’ heart-worn drawl lifting each song to new heights. Expanding on this soundworld are collaborators Sholto Dobie (self-built organs) and bassist Otto Willberg, who provide drones, dissonant jolts and detuned paths for the music to open itself, but also curl into its own. Sounds are folded into one another, birthing new shapes, layers and sonic possibilities.

Ben describes the album as « permeated by the sense that came from being around this sort of connection to the world where everything is immediate and fundamental. » The album is representative of this shift inwards: on his own, socially, as a parent. But with that it also represents a confidence to deal with everything. The album is an excavation, both finding strange joy in simple findings and an unburdening himself of everything else, letting every thought and feeling whisks itself away up in the air.

  — Fielding Hope (curator Cafe Oto, London) Lire la suite

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Okraïna #15 : Maher Shalal Hash Baz – Je est un autre

MAHER SHALAL HASH BAZ
Je est un autre – okraïna #15 – double 10’’

This recording is not a « best of », it is a reflection of Tori Kudo’s evolution as a composer, from playing with seasoned musicians, to playing with people just starting out, from playing with meticulous scores, to playing call & response melodies written down, to the songs here on « Je est un Autre »: instant improvisations based on keyboard compositions that Tori plays for the group. Yes, that is it. He plays a recording of himself on the keyboard, with singing or humming sometimes and he leaves it to the « big band » to interpret this on the spot. Sometimes, you can make out the melody, other times it is quite obscure, as if a sort of common shyness flows out of the collected instrumentarium.

And other times, well, it is a big party.

Mr Kudo and the group were invited to tour Europe to celebrate 20 years of the project Le Ton Mité, members of which are absorbed into the ensemble. The recording evolves from the static sound of hermetic conditions to the live concert in the later tracks. The studio here, is a trendy concert hall in Brussels Les Ateliers Claus. You hear the applause of the brave ears that weathered the ride of accidental psychedelia & moiré of various notes fading into and out of each other. This is only a sliver of the material from the 20 hour recording marathon documenting the new composing/playing style of Mr Kudo & snippets from the last concert of the March 2018 tour. Perhaps the album should be called « Je est un autre : Volume 1 » in a vague reference to « My Brother The Wind » series from Sun Ra. In any case, here you have four sides of ten inch vinyl to take you on a journey into Maher: Je est un autre… 

Lire la suite

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Okraïna #14 : Linus Vandewolken – Het vlier, een hommel op aarde

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LINUS VANDEWOLKEN
Het vlier, een hommel op aardeokraïna #14 – double 10’’

‘’ What you are listening to is the sound of a forgotten instrument. It has existed since the middle ages, but the earliest example still intact is from 1608. Once a staple in most households in the low countries, it is a true folk instrument, of the people, mainly played in the past by women who used their kitchen tables as a resonating surfaces to amplify & accompany traditional religious & secular tunes. Nowadays it seen rarely outside of museums in Brussels & other places you most likely have never heard of. It is not spectacular, its simplest version is just a long thin box with strings on top. Some of the strings are melody strings, which have frets placed underneath them, the others are drone strings that have no frets. Traditionally it was strummed with a goose feather & notes were made by sliding a hard stick with a handle, from fret to fret on the melody strings leaving the drone strings ringing openly. The constant hum of the drones is where the name of the instrument comes from: bumblebee, which in Flemish, is a hommel.

The hommel has all but disappeared from the collective memory of Flanders. If it is seen outside of a display case, it is usually being played in a static way, denied the right to evolve & find a more contemporary voice. It has thus been replaced in the hearts of most Belgians by acoustic guitars & the more well known Appalachian dulcimer, which strangely enough is a descendent of this instrument: the grandparent is lost, the grandchild is celebrated. I saw the hommel for the first time years ago at the Volksinstrumentenmuseum in Gooik. Curious to how it would sound, I suggested to my father that we make one. A seasoned woodworker, he was up to the challenge & so we began… The sides & top are made from Douglas Fir recovered from an old bookshelf. The headstock is maple. The end block is a piece of Oregon myrtle wood & the fretboard… I have to say I don’t remember. We cut & sanded the wood, sawed the guides for the frets & set them in, created the bridge & nut out of ersatz granite, found some tuners from an old guitar & assembled the pieces together. Is is not the most elaborate example of a hommel, but, with the relationship I have forged with it over time, it’s a beauty to me.

I do not play in a traditional way: I pluck, fingerpick, tap & bow amplified flatwound electric guitar strings. I change the notes with my fingers, metal sticks, steel tubes & the hard stick with a wooden handle which has a special name : the vlier (which is a more local, Flemish Brabant, name of the instrument itself). I play in a Eb/Bb tuning to be in harmony with the tin whistles you hear from time to time & occasionally play shakers I made by hand from branches, wire & bottle caps. The songs in this collection are not traditional either, they are inspired by cycling around Flanders & the landscape that surrounds my home in Niemandaal, a small village in the Pajottenland of Flanders, not far from the capital city, but isolated enough to not hear the constant hum of the highways. It’s a nice place to relax, filled with what I would call elegant micro-landscapes: simple combinations of fields, grass, streams, small farms, rolling hills… Sometimes called the « Tuscany of the North », wine is replaced by lambik, a naturally fermented sour beer, or as I prefer to say, grain wine & it is well-known as being the place where Pieter Bruegel the Elder would set up his easel.

Lire la suite

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Okraïna #13 : Roy Montgomery (& Jessica Moss) Last Year’s Man / After Vermeer

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ROY MONTGOMERY (& JESSICA MOSS)
Last Year’s Man / After Vermeer – okraïna #13 – 10’’

“ My first deep exposure to Leonard Cohen was the Bird on a Wire documentary by Tony Palmer, which was, against the odds, broadcast on public television in New Zealand around 1974 or 1975. At age 15 or 16 I thought it was too dark. A few years later, in the late ’70s, I wanted things darker. The first Cohen LP was very clever but a little too ‘up’. The second was too public and political for me. Songs of Love and Hate seemed more honest, more about personal failure. I liked it, although Cohen tended to disown it, especially ‘Dress Rehearsal Rag’ and ‘Last Year’s Man’, neither of which he performed live later on. I like ‘Last Year’s Man’ for the same reason I like Nick Drake’s ‘Poor Boy’. It wallows and parodies at the same time. I came across the Suzuki Omnichord OM-27 because it was mentioned in relation to another Canadian, Joni Mitchell. It looked like a mystery box of potentially very good or very bad sounds, like a Bontempi chord organ customized for space travel in a Stanley Kubrick film. Irresistible… I was fortunate to meet Jessica Moss because of the 12 hour Drone event at Le Guess Who Festival in Utrecht in November 2017. I thought it would be cool to jam with some of the other people scheduled to play their own pieces so I asked the organisers, Bob Helleur and Jacob Hagelaars, to sound out the other droners a few weeks before the festival. Jessica replied, I sent a sample piece, and we talked, more than rehearsed, a day before the performance. We did our piece live and then some months later I sent her a recorded piece to which she added her magical playing. ”  (Roy Montgomery)


Roy Montgomery : vocal and keyboard (Omnichord)
Jessica Moss : violin

Emma Johnston and Arnie van Bussel : backing vocal on ‘Last Year’s Man’

Recorded
mainly with a first generation Suzuki Omnichord OM-27
onto a Tascam DP-01FX 8-track Portastudio, Christchurch NZ, Jan-March 2018

Mixed
by Arnie van Bussel at Nighshift Studios, Christchurch NZ, May 2018

Mastered
by Harris Newman, Grey Market Mastering, M

12 euros
+ shipping costs (/ port)
https://okrainarecords.bandcamp.com/album/last-years-man-after-vermeer

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Okraïna #12 : Alasdair Roberts, Neil McDermott & Tartine de clous Au Cube

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ALASDAIR ROBERTS, NEIL McDERMOTT & TARTINE DE CLOUS
Au Cube – okraïna #12 – double 10’’ / CD

Alasdair Roberts has worked with Drag City Records for some 20 years, releasing more than ten records featuring both interpretations of traditional songs and his own songwriting. He has played with Will Oldham, Jason Molina and many others and is now part of The Furrow Collective. In addition to being a fine fiddler in the Scottish traditional style, Neil McDermott is currently researching the musical and political engagement of the 1960s Scottish folk scene with the anti-nuclear movement. Tartine de Clous (Geoffroy Dudouit, Thomas Georget and Guillaume Maupin) is a singing trio originally from the department of Charente in western France. Following in the footsteps of some of the great French groups of the late 20th century folk revival (such as Mélusine and La Bamboche), they sing largely unaccompanied three-part harmony arrangements of the traditional songs of France… and Scotland !

In early 2016 Alasdair Roberts spoke of his admiration for Tartine de Clous’ first LP, Sans Folklore in an article in English folk magazine, fRoots. After a first musical encounter in Glasgow in January 2017, alongside local fiddler Neil McDermott, the five of them reunited in December 2017. They explored a common set of songs, French, Scottish and Roberts originals, and recorded them live, with an audience, at the Cube Microplex, an amazing Arts venue and progressive social wellbeing enterprise in central Bristol.

L’Écossais Alasdair Roberts sort des disques sur la label américain Drag City depuis une vingtaine d’années, nourris d’interprétations de chansons traditionnelles mais aussi ses propres et impressionnantes compositions, sans que les secondes ne soient toujours faciles à distinguer des premières. Il a entre autre joué avec Will Oldham et Jason Molina et fait actuellement partie de The Furrow Collective. En plus d’être un violoniste écossais aguerri et curieux, Neil McDermott vient de terminer une recherche sur l’engagement musical et politique de la scène écossaise des années 1960 contre le nucléaire. Tartine de Clous (Geoffroy Dudouit, Thomas Georget et Guillaume Maupin) est un trio a capella originaire de Saintonge, interprétant des chansons trad françaises tout en suivant l’empreinte harmonique folk de groupes français des années 1970 comme Mélusine. Ici, ils adaptent aussi leur savoir faire au répertoire écossais et « Robertsien ».

Début 2016, Alasdair Roberts avait raconté par écrit son admiration pour les harmonies vocales de Tartine de clous dans une chronique de leur premier album Sans folklore pour le magazine anglais fRoots. Après une première rencontre musicale à Glasgow quelques mois plus tard, les cinq chanteurs et musiciens se sont retrouvés en décembre 2017 pour explorer ensemble un nouveau répertoire et l’enregistrer, comme toujours en concert, en présence d’un public, au Cube Microplex, cinéma et lieu de concerts alternatif de Bristol.


Traditional songs or songs of traditional inspiration ; songs by Alasdair Roberts and other covers (see detailed insert) : all arranged and played by / Chansons traditionnelles ou d’inspiration traditionnelle ; morceaux d’Alasdair Roberts et autres reprises (voir feuillet détaillé) toutes arrangées et interprétées par :
Alasdair Roberts, Neil McDermott, Geoffroy Dudouit, Thomas Georget & Guillaume Maupin

Recorded live by / Enregistré en concert par :
Neil McDermott
Cube Cinema, Bristol, December 2017
(except track #8 recorded at the Old Dentist, London)

Mix & Mastering :
Sam Smith, SJS Mastering, Glasgow

Illustration :
Gwénola Carrère, Bruxelles

15 euros
+ shipping costs (/ port)

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Okraïna #10 : Senyawa (& Vincent Moon) Calling The New Gods

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SENYAWA (& VINCENT MOON)
Calling The New Gods – okraïna #10 – single 10″ / simple 25cm

The film Calling The New Gods, by Vincent Moon, is the document of musicians Rully Shabara & Wukir Suryadi of the group Senyawa playing & being filmed on location, outside, tracing a path ​from the outskirts of Yogyakarta, ​Java (on the border of a rice field, on the edge of a garbage dump, etc.) until the center of the city (in the middle of a market, in a fair). In a sort of mandala, of centripetal spiral, during an entire day, from dawn until dusk, the film – with soundscapes shared between the music of Senyawa and field recordings – captures the powerful, unique & fascinating presence of the Indonesian duo in the middle of the physical landscapes and human mosaic that helped create it.

Two and a half years after the first contact between our label and the musicians & filmmaker, the time has come to expose the work to a new audience via another inward spiral, that of seven songs from the film’s soundtrack on a 10″ vinyl, with an added etymological obviousness: that this recording is released on Okraïna, which is Russian for the outskirts, the suburbs.


Music : Senyawa
–  Voice : Rully Shabara
–  Instruments : Wukir Suryadi

Filmed, recorded and mixed by Vincent Moon
in situ in Yogyakarta (Indonesia, Java) in January 2012
– w/ the help of Aniza Santos and the people of Yogyakarta

Mastering and vinyl cut : Fred Alstadt
Angström Mastering, Brussels, spring 2017

Illustration : Gwénola Carrère
– Brussels, summer 2017


12 euros
+ port (/ shipping costs)

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Okraïna #11 : Delphine Dora & Mocke Le Corps défendant

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DELPHINE DORA & MOCKE
Le Corps défendant – okraïna #11 – double 25cm

Souvent, on croit dialoguer et on soliloque, on tire la couverture à soi, on empêche l’autre parole, on est trop bavard ou trop taiseux. Et puis parfois, comme miraculeusement, on y parvient : on se met à savoir parler parce qu’on sait écouter. Mocke et Delphine Dora, dans la lente impatience de ces conversations musicales qui ont donné Le Corps défendant, ont cherché à tisser ce drôle de lien qui unit ceux qui construisent ensemble.
Des deux singularités (l’évidence même d’avoir affaire à deux artistes qui ne ressemblent à personne), ni l’une ni l’autre ne l’emporte. Au contraire, ce qui advient de ce dialogue n’est pas seulement l’addition des deux mais l’apparition de ce que chacun est capable de révéler de l’autre et qu’on avait pas encore entendu. On les retrouvent tous deux, on les reconnaît bien sûr, mais ailleurs, là où le même est déjà autre. C’est une étrange arithmétique où 1+1=3. Comme dans toute conversation il faut quelqu’un qui rompe le silence sans savoir à l’avance ce qui adviendra. Le silence doit se rompre comme le pain. La guitare s’y essaie ici, le piano là. Il ne faut pas trop chercher ses mots même si on les pèse parce qu’ils entraînent le reste. Comme dans toute conversation il faut savoir prendre une place mouvante pour que l’autre puisse trouver la sienne. Parfois la guitare de Mocke commence, sidérale, dévale les pentes, se fait liquide, et trouve dans le piano de Delphine Dora son nécessaire contrepoint, sur quoi s’arrimer. D’autre fois c’est l’inverse, la guitare électrique évite que le sol se dérobe. Tout semble venir sinon de l’improvisé du moins de l’intuitif qui les surprend eux mêmes. Parfois ils jouent sur des harmonies différentes, comme s’ils étaient encore loin, d’autres fois commencent ensemble et se séparent sans violence pour au final se retrouver au moment où on ne s’y attend pas. N’importe quand peut être mais pas n’importe où. Ils se rejoignent dans la césure, la pure parole, l’éclair, l’inexpressif. C’est à dire dans ce lieu que le disque invente. L’inexpressif ce n’est pas l’insensible, au contraire. C’est le monde d’avant le monde (ou après ce qui revient au même), où le sens se déploie dans sa nouveauté, où on invente une langue qui, dépourvue de signifiant connu peut tout signifier. C’est, plutôt que ce qui s’exprime, ce qui s’imprime avant même qu’on ait pu le ramener au déjà entendu. D’ailleurs quand Delphine Dora chante, elle le fait avec les mots qui viennent juste avant l’articulation signifiante, en chuchotant ou en inventant une drôle de langue sortie tout droit de contes étranges. La langue d’une pythie qui saurait se rire d’elle même et qui se moquerait bien des oracles. Piano, voix, guitare, tout se rejoint et c’est bouche bée qu’on assiste à ce moment où les choses s’assemblent. La musique prend en charge l’organisation des polyphonies qui nous constituent, aucune voix ne doit écraser l’autre. Et la beauté surgit, au corps défendant de Mocke et Delphine Dora, comme elle surgit toujours, dans les interstices du jeu risqué du funambule qui ne s’interdit rien parce qu’il refuse de choisir sous les injonctions de la séparation. Un jeu tout à la fois quiet et inquiet, consonant et dissonant, drôle et mélancolique, proche et lointain, savant et populaire. On a pas à choisir et on ne choisira pas. Tout ici se retrouve assemblé. Et même, au bord de la cassure, la voix de Delphine Dora semble convoquer à la fois les vivants et les morts comme sur le déchirant L’Absent était parmi nous qui clôt le disque. On le cherchait depuis tout ce temps et il était là, assis à la table. C’est bien l’ambition, que tout ce qui a disparu nous réapparaisse.
On pourrait les croire seuls. Mais de cette solitude particulière qui a les moyens de se confier. Des insulaires sans doute comme le dit le titre d’un des morceaux. Mais des insulaires qui rêvent de ponts et de navires. De voyages intersidéraux où même la lointaine Pluton s’éloigneNous voilà embarqués. »

Delphine Dora: voix, piano, piano préparé, claviers, célesta, glockenspiel, cordes de piano et de guitare, violon, shruti box, field recordings, objets

Mocke: guitare

composé par: Delphine Dora & Mocke
enregistré par: Delphine Dora & Mocke
mixé par: Mocke

mastérisé par: Harris Newman (Grey Market Mastering, Montréal)

illustré par: Gwénola Carrère



15 euros

+ port

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Okraïna #11 : Ned Netherwood about Delphine Dora & Mocke’s Le Corps défendant

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DELPHINE DORA & MOCKE
Le Corps défendant – okraïna #11 – double 10inch

There is something special about when artists like these collaborate. Two independent talents, both completely self-sufficient choosing to come together and see what happens, to let the muses mingle and share the results with the rest of us. What we have here, however, is not some quick jam caught on tape but a long distance collaboration carefully put together over three years. The result is something that gives us a broad overview of the two talents spotlighted here, showcasing many different moods, sounds and styles. Created like an exquisite corpse story they sent each other music to work on with no instructions or suggestions, just some inspiring mix tapes of everyone from Duke Ellington to Harry Patch. They clearly found their way.

As well as her own music (which ended up on Pitchfork’s best of 2015 list), Delphine runs the excellent Wild Silence record label. As well as being a solo artist, Mocke has played with the likes of Arlt, Holden and Midget !

On this record, Mocke plays the guitar and Delphine sings and plays everything else. He’s one hell of a guitar player, bringing to mind Loren Connors, John Fahey and anyone who ever took a six string and mastered it their own damn way. Delphine sings sweetly, sometimes from classic texts or as a glossolalia (divinely expressing without words), though to a non-French speaker you would swear was some lost classic pop song reinterpreted in her own style.

Both Delphine and Mocke are originally from Paris but both have long since left, Mocke for Brussels and Delphine for the deepest French countryside. That difference can be found in their music. Mocke’s music is urbane with a touch of inner-city paranoia. Delphine’s music always sounds isolated in a big landscape. They compliment each other as opposites.

Like all Okraina releases, the stunning artwork is by Gwénola Carrère and I can’t think of anyone better suited to try and encapsulate this stunningly varied and vivid album. The title does not translate to English as it is a poetic corruption of a common phrase. I think something similar happened to common music on this album.

Ned Netherwood
Was Ist Das?

 


 

15 euros
+ shipping costs

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