However, the relatively simplicity of the arrangement says nothing of the detail and scope of the music, as though in this genre there is an inverse relationship between number of instruments and level of detail. Indeed, as his bio states, Atalay’s music “varies in structure and character, ranging from long-form compositions to brief impressionistic explorations of a theme,” and thus through guitar alone he is equally capable of evoking moments in time as he is entire landscapes.

Teaming up with the good folks at Dust Etc. to put out what will be the first album that he has not released himself, this month sees the release of the latest Kerem Atalay, Summer Winter. Performing something of a balancing act between the poles of long form and vignette, the album draws its atmospheric core from the equally antithetical seasons of the title. The good folks at Post-Trash featured lead single ‘Summer 1’ a few weeks ago, a track they described as “warm and vibrant, beaming down like the hot sun and entrenched in long day vibes and late nights […] creep[ing] forward with a winding arpeggiated melody, bright and beautiful, with a sense of wonder.”

We’re super pleased to be able to share ‘Winter 2’, a brand new track from the thematic flip-side of the album. But that’s not to say Kerem Atalay moves away from a sense of wonder. The duality between summer and winter is not easily partitioned into a happy/sad divide, and ‘Winter 2’ could be said to match or even trump the brightness of ‘Summer 1’. This is a track representing early January mornings where the sun stretches shadows and shimmers layers of frost, life emerging from the night before, red cheeked and speckled with an icy light.

Summer Winter will be released on the 22nd June via Dust Etc. and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Tape design and photographs by Mindy Burgess and Caleb Kong

The post Song Premiere: Kerem Atalay – Winter 2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Our choice of songs for this one perhaps isn’t the most subtle, and might well highlight our naivety/ignorance when it comes to the geographic differences between American folk music, but we just went with tracks which we felt capture the mood of Hinojosa’s work in some way. The tracklisting carries links to the artists we’ve covered in the past, if you want to read our thoughts on their music.

Tracklisting:

1) Will the Circle Be Unbroken – Marisa Anderson
2) Floating Rhododendron – Sarah Louise
3) Out West – The Coal Creek Boys
4) Fable – Sam Moss
5) Impress My Memory – Stephen Steinbrink
6) Sometimes – Noel’le Longhaul
7) Hands in Our Names – Karima Walker
8) Mexican Blanket – Wes Tirey
9) Stained Glass Eye – The Dead Tongues
10) Around and Around – Mountain Man
11) Revelation Drift – dbh
12) Dark Was the Night – Ry Cooder

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In winter 2015 I spent a month in Colorado, playing nights at a bar in a big quasi country band. In the mornings I quietly worked on new songs, borrowed my friend Jackson’s nylon guitar and recorded some of them. Here are three, presented as works in progress. Consider it a lo-fi preview of things to come.

Opener ‘Walking The Line’ gives you a good idea of what the EP is all about, with its gentle but intricate finger-picked guitar supporting Moss’s folk tale.

“Brush the fog from my eyes to reveal something clean
Look in through an open window to the nearly unseen.
But oh the lightness of the morning turns to eve
and stars go funnelling from you”

‘Postman’ is a moody folk tale in the vain of the classics, with a tough-luck wanderer parting with hopes and worries and wisdoms which could only be learned through time on the road. “Postman in the grey and blue,” he sings. “can I sleep among the bags while you drive? I’ll take the wheel after a time”. Closer ‘Vertebrae’ emerges from a swirl of instrumentation, what at first seems a desolate loneliness warming into a sentimental glow as Moss’s vocals appear, resulting in something akin to Small Sur.

If unpretentious, homespun folk music is your thing, just nylon-stringed guitar and intimate vocals, then this is the EP for you. You can buy Pitkin Country Morning now the Sam Moss Bandcamp page.

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We featured Sarah Louise late last year, a brief paragraph that described her American primitive album Field Guide as “a lost disc from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music” and promised a new year release on Scissor Tail Records. Well I’m pleased to say that the release is upon us. Part of the Scissor Tail Editions series (which includes the Tirey/Weathers split we also covered), Field Guide has been packaged as a quite beautiful cassette with artwork by Dylan Aycock.

As you can guess from the title and artwork, Field Guide is inspired by the natural world, especially the Black Mountains of North Carolina where Louise resides. While every song is instrumental, the title provides clues as to the context of the pieces, framing each track within a specific time or place or situation. The title track is vivid and rich, swirling around the listener and blossoming with tiny details so that there is something wherever which way you turn. ‘Dog Improv’ casts the listener as a canine explorer rooting through the undergrowth, the tempo changing on a whim to follow scent trails or other curiosities, while ‘Waterways’ adopts a steady background rhythm upon which playful picking becomes the rippling surface. ‘Late Summer Seed Collection’ is radiant and breezy and conjures the smell of an earth warmed by the sun, the small intricacies hidden within the flow mimicking the morphological complexity of the seeds themselves.

Musical comparisons will undoubtedly see you looking backwards, but to use the term ‘old’ in describing this album would not quite grasp the sensation experienced while listening. Instead it seems more apt to say Field Guide exists outside of time as we generally consider it. Listen to John Fahey or Matokie Slaughter or Blind Willie McTell and there is a commonality running through the music that seems to withstand the changeable patterns and trends that are adopted and cast aside across the years. There seems to be an unchanging element at its core, a force defeated by stylistic fads in genres such as pop and rock. Both in sound and theme, Louise manages to circumvent the skin-deep and decidedly human introspection that occupies most genres in favour of something larger and wider, resonating on a deeper level. The songs speak of an association with nature that makes everything else appear incidental, a connection that humanity has attempted to sever for millennia without ever quite succeeding. In this way the album is both sad and joyous, a reminder of all we have missed and all there is left to experience, the terrifying, heartbreaking and glorious comfort that we, as humans, are an oh-so-small part of an oh-so-wonderful world.

We are delighted to have an exclusive stream of the album that will be available up until the release date. Grab a tape or digital download from Scissor Tail Records.

So make sure you pick up a tape or download the album!

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We have followed Max Holmquist’s career with some admiration, first as South of Lincoln and then Great American Desert (which we wrote about here). Holmquist is now in a band called Oquoa and they have made their album available for free. Their sound is somewhere between Water Liars and Hip Hatchet, a restrained folky rock which has darkness and grief lurking just beneath the surface. Check out ‘Cigarettes’ below.

You can download the album for free here.

A Singer of Songs – From Hello to Goodbye

Barcelona-based folkster A Singer of Songs is back with From Hello to Goodbye, another album chock full of lovely lo-fi tunes recorded in his home studio. Some tracks are delicate (‘Sand in my Shoes’), some are a little more rambunctious (such as opener ‘Another Way of Saying Hello’), and all seem to have the curious sensation of being between times, as small moments of the past are opening up in the present. Maybe it’s the use of violins, trumpets and pianos or the slightly European street music vibe on tracks like ‘I’ll Follow You’. Maybe it’s just the cartographic artwork.

A Singer of Songs is attached to the Son Canciones label, and you can buy the album now from the A Singer of Songs’ Bandcamp page.

Steve Palmer – Unblinking Sun

Steve Palmer is a “Fahey nut and guitar obsessive” who has taken lessons from American Primitivism legend Peter Lang. It is perhaps unsurprising then that Palmer makes guitar driven instrumental music that combines the finger-picking of traditional US folk with more modern sounds of drone and krautrock. The result is a collection of long, complex acoustic songs peppered with ambient and psychedelic flourishes that lend a whole jazzy improvisation feel to things.

Unblinking Sun is being released by Dying for Bad Music.

Ezkiel – A New Mask

Ezkiel is Louis Monroe from New Orleans. A New Mask is his debut release and presents four dark and cinematic folk songs which explore the themes of change and rebirth. The EP was developed almost by accident, as part of a music production class that Monroe was taking at university. Monroe himself was required to production on a singer-songwriter record, but the recording artist pulled out last minute. This forced Monroe himself to record something and A New Mask was the end result. The tracks were recorded at home and have that intimate bedroom pop vibe which I really like. Grab it now via the Ezkiel Bandcamp page.

Charlie Rayne – Wider Waters

Last but not least is Wider Waters, a brilliant album by Beirut-based Charlie Rayne. Rayne makes glorious Dylan-style folk songs which twist and turn with a remarkable lyrical flow. The focus is very much on Rayne’s passionate deliver and the stories held within, the bare bones guitars providing the perfect counterbalance. If Sweden were to stake a claim on Bob Dylan reincarnate with Kristian Mattson, then I think we have to say that Beirut now have themselves a real rival. Get it via Bandcamp.

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