The album is “an expanse of impressionistic tonal color,” Lost Tribe explains, “where elliptical patterns of horns, reeds, bowed metals and the ecstatic chatter of unfamiliar percussion cluster, rise and decay.” Fritch weaves this panoply of elements into something peculiar yet organic, conjuring an experience at once menacingly ominous and lushly evocative. You awaken in the shambling fever dream of ‘Balkanize’, amygdala visions of a reeling forest canopy illuminated in stark torchlight. The reedy flutes join a malarial chorus of clicks and clacks that circle in a wicked dance, and woodwind groans like laboured lungs, a faraway melody snaking like candleflame in the night.

The album continues in this vein, Fritch again demonstrating his ability to call forth worlds of his own making to create music that defies any conventional description. ‘Unfulfilled Promise’ grows in intensity towards a cathartic midpoint, while ‘A Cold Calculus’ unfurls in a lazy writhing motion, skittering percussion scuttling from the corners like paranoid thoughts. Remaining relatively subdued throughout, it’s part somber, part sinister, but fades into a white glow that feels neither, resisting the urge to throw off its shackles and erupt in noise.

The title track is a journey into an unknown, perhaps toward some strange destination deep in the folds of the brain rather than anywhere physical. Galloping percussion rattles across a wash of tone and texture, giddy horns mewling and whispering from within the murk. Beyond the halfway point there’s a hush, the whole track falling away to a tribal shuffle and oppressive negative space. Then the far-off moan of a ghostly choir approaches and suddenly you’ve been turned around, find yourself right back where you started.

Closer ‘Empty Heroics’, the record’s longest track at just over ten minutes, proceeds on its own path. Encapsulating the entire album, it shifts from the near-devotional choral quality of its opening to menacing stomps of sound and beguiling negative space. By the halfway mark bedraggled percussion has shuffled in, a junkyard beat that ebbs and flows in unlikely rhythm, an orchestra of rattles, thuds and scrapes that Fritch reanimates and directs to his bidding. Nobody else makes music quite like it. Here’s to ten more years of Vieo Abiungo.

At Once, There Was No Horizon is out 16th October on Lost Tribe Sound and you can get it via the William Ryan Fritch Bandcamp page. Alternatively, subscribe to Lost Tribe’s Built Upon a Fearful Void series to get the album as one of 15 releases over the coming months.

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With a double William Ryan Fritch album (Deceptive Cadence: Music For Film Vol. I & II) due later this spring, Vieo Abiungo was resurrected to fill a gap while fans, particularly those subscribed to the We Stayed The Path That Fell To Shadow album series, waited patiently. Fritch gave Lost Tribe Sound access to his considerable archive of lost and abandoned albums, and like intrepid explorers in some faraway tomb, they blew away the dust and cobwebs and found some real gems. The resulting album, titled The Dregs, showcases these songs in all their uncanny glory, a collection that “buzze[s] with the same raw and texturally unpredictability” that Fritch has made his own.

Despite the dichotomy between projects, Fritch’s aims with both are similar. He uses Vieo Abiungo as a vehicle to transport the listener, creating what Lost Tribe describe as “music that leaves its tattered edges proudly in place, acoustic instrumentation blended seamlessly with dirty mechanics, timeworn sound worlds rooted in the muck and mire of the present.” The Dregs is no different, a tangled cacophony of ramshackle percussion and viola de gamba, joined by an array of horns, marimbas, vintage keyboards, mbiras, and Tuareg-style electric guitars. The result is akin to a North African fever dream, an opium den of swirling poly-rhythms and genuinely surprising percussive shifts.

From the ominous shuffling stomp of opener ‘Fronting’ to the expansive heat-stroked white-out of ‘A Branch Gave Way’, the album remains unpredictable and illusory throughout. To add to the swirling surreality, Lost Tribe’s Ryan Keane has also made a video for ‘Cobble Together’. Taking footage from the Prelinger Archives, the video is made of gauzy overlaid layers of old black and white images, a dream-like collage of yawning hippos, tribal masks and convoys of both camels and 4x4s.

The Dregs is out now on Lost Tribe Sound and you can get it on cassette or download from the William Ryan Fritch Bandcamp page.

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Various Small Flames’

Songs of 2017

Anamon – Kneel Old
Android Automatic – Dark Roads*
Angie McMahon – Slow Mover
Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Baxter Roy Long – Paribanou
Bea Troxel – Let Them Know
Big Thief – Mary
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Soft Stud
Bully – Running
Cayetana – Mesa
Charly Bliss – Percolator
Chastity Belt – Different Now
CHUCK – Happy Birthday
The County Liners – Maria
The Courtneys – Tour
Craig Finn – God in Chicago
Crumb – Locket
Crushing – Emery Board
Cut Worms – Like Going Down Sideways
David Bazan – Care
Distant Reader – First Try
Emperor X – God Save Coastal Dorset
Fits – Ice Cream on a Nice Day
German Error Message – 2017*
Gleemer – Soothe Me
Great Grandpa – Favorite Show
Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha Lala
Hiccup – Teasin’
Horse Culture – Texaco
Illuminati Hotties – ‘(You’re Better) Than Ever’
Japandroids – No Known Drink or Drug
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – If We Were Vampires
Jay Som – The Bus Song
Jeremy Squires – Night Cars
Katie Ellen – Drawing Room
Lizzie No – Monuments
Lomelda – Bam Sha Klam
Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Audits & Surveys
Meursault – The Mill
Mount Eerie – Crow
Nice Legs – Mighty Three
Oceanator – Nowhere Nothing
Ohyeahsumi – Daisy
Old Earth – Pit Dynamics
PASTEL – Stammer
Peter Silberman – New York
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness
Pope – Talk Me Out of It
Protomartyr – Windsor Hum
Rainwater – Place
Ratboys – Elvis is in the Freezer
Rick Rude – Bald & Fat in Houston, TX
Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Rose Dorn – Dirt
See Through Dresses – Lucy’s Arm
Shannen Moser – A Funeral, A Friend, My Sanity
Sinai Vessel – Died On My Birthday
Slaughter Beach, Dog – Phoenix
SOAR – Fort Funston
Soft Fangs – Jordan // Jackson Elementary
Spartan Jet-Plex – We Believe
Strange Ranger – House Show
Strawberry Runners – Garden Hose
Timid, The Brave – Alice
Us and Only Us – Bored of Black
Vagabon – Cold Apartment
Viewfinder – Instant Moonlight
The Washboard Abs – Veil
Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong
Wild Pink – Albert Ross
William Ryan Fritch – In Our Blood
The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters
Ylayali – Cherry Tomatoes

*Strictly released in 2016, but barely, and we covered it in Jan. 2017.

If you missed it, you can see our Favourite Albums of 2017 list here. Also, the curious can find such lists from previous years here.

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Well, try telling that to William Ryan Fritch. We’ve featured several of the California artist’s albums over the last year or so, and have admired just as many from a distance, with no discernible dip in quality despite his rapid-fire production. He makes music to fall back in, to follow into the murk and marvel at where you’re taken. Fritch’s newest release, Behind the Pale, his latest on Lost Tribe Sound, is no exception. Listening to a new William Ryan Fritch feels like returning to some strange land, familiar only in its oddness and pure artistic expression.

But Behind the Pale also has other qualities. It’s an album created during a period of great turmoil in Fritch’s life, as his daughter was born 3 months premature and then had to remain at the hospital for weeks on end. As he describes, “The ecstatic and cataclysmic personal event of having a child was thrust upon us sooner than we could have imagined. Blinded by the radiance of the limitless love and the enveloping clouds of abject fear there are no senses that are attuned to guide you but the ones that say simply ‘Onward!’”

Things are dark and ominous at the beginning, the A-side furry with worry and disorientation. ‘Never is it Enough’ drops the listener into a fog-shrouded landscape, an unintelligible moan sounding from the murk. But soon the track gains a certain clarity, and Fritch’s vocals come through surprisingly clear in an undulating groove. ‘Depths of Our Minds’ is all anxious twitches and black syrupy vocals, while ‘Sheep in the Fog’ sounds like The Antlers in a sleepwalk, Fritch’s vocals rising to a falsetto as the instrumentation creeps and thuds around him.

‘In Our Blood’ is something else altogether, a glittering jam that’s rich with elegance and romanticism. And the track seems to signal a change, as follow-up ‘Greedy Things’ sounds similarly bright and grand, infused with a sense of what Fritch describes as a “wounded but assured hopefulness”. Not that Side B is suddenly full of sunny pop songs, there are still shadowy corners threatening to leak closer, but there’s definitely a different feeling, a glow that illuminates the tracks from within. The man himself puts it best when he describes the emotion behind the sensation. “Much remains uncertain”, he says, “but in the small moments basking in the untainted love and goodness of your child, the future for the first time seems undimmed.”

With Behind the Pale, William Ryan Fritch continues his work as one of the most singular and prolific musicians at work today. This is an album tempered in the flames of real emotion and created with a verve that is simply beyond most musicians. As Lost Tribe put it: “Like all good art, it does its best to translate complex, abstract emotions into palpable and compelling expression.” Best of all it requires almost as much of the listener, revealing itself slowly over numerous plays, a counter-punch to the immediate sugar-rush effect of playlists, and a reminder that there’s always a room for real, finely-wrought art in our lives.

Behind the Pale will be released on the 20th of October on Lost Tribe Sound.

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Tracklisting:

1. prairie creek redwoods state park, ca – bedbug
2. See the World – Kidsmoke
3. Motion | Sickness – Good Good Blood
4. Downtown – Gabriella Cohen
5. Automatic – Kyle Morton
6. Throwing Roses – Eva Foote
7. vildt+sødt – Eugenia
8. Dicktations Forever – Dicktations
9. Fallen Robin – Wild Leaves
10. Palms – Native Other
11. Not Your Prey – Squirrel Flower
12. Luna – Akira Kosemura
13. Made of Gold – Albert af Ekenstam
14. She Floats – Van-Anh Nguyen
15. Dead Radiance – Ego Death
16. Sponge State – Sløtface
17. Black Mass – Wooden Maria
18. Float – Silver Liz
19. glass machines discovering water – Corvus B.
20. Longshot – The Furious Season
21. The Same Chords – Tiger in My Tank
22. Let’s Go to the Beach – Sophie Longshaw
23. Blue Moon – Many Voices Speak
24. One Footed – MAH KEE OH
25. Country Room – Static Animal
26. The Ground Before Him – Drowning By Numbers
27. Refugee – Cameron James Henderson
28. down (kenny) – ever
29. Strange Tones – Youceff Kabal
30. Don’t Let Love Go By – Golden Suits
31. Sit and Stare – Tiny Dinosaurs
32. Settle Down – Dark Mean
33. telegraph ave. – Betty Becky
34. WEN – glider
35. Nicholas – Holiday Oscar
36. Lyse Striber – True Strength
37. Careless – Stationary Suns
38. Vulnerable – Mark Timmins
39. On & On – Reuben Hollebon
40. Recoiled – William Ryan Fritch
41. Lonely Girl – Praything
42. Drinking the Same Water – Katie Spencer
43. Get It Right – Magana
44. Cheer Up Free Your Mind – Jenny O.

That was October 2016, and if you like what you see/hear, why not check out the other months too?

The post October 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

His latest album, Ill Tides, is the first in a new series of cassettes from label Lost Tribe Sound, inspired by the label HQ’s move from Arizona to Wisconsin. The series, entitled Dead West, is intended to “focus on music built for exploring and soundtracking your environment, whether you’re deep in the middle of lush woodlands, or just laying back at home with rested eyes”. Cassettes were chosen for both practical and aesthetic reasons, meaning not only will the music sound great on tape, with all of its quirks and so-called limitations, but the quick turnover time allows fans to get their hands on the music much sooner than they would with a vinyl release.

Ill Tides begins with ‘Ghosts in the Gale’, a song with a perfectly descriptive title, the atmosphere a slow roil like the grasping hands of tortured souls. A plaintive guitar line eventually enters, bringing an air of quiet sadness like the calm after a disaster, the feeling of watching from the cliff edge as the remains of a vessel are brought in on the tide. Follow up ‘Recoiled’ is equally atmospheric, the background ambience almost like wordless voices from some nameless gloom or shifting mists on a strange and unexplored shore.

It’s practically impossible to give a comprehensive review of Fritch’s work. As with any piece of art, every listener will take something different, the images conjured into their mind unique and personal, though for us at least the ocean is a recurring feature. The title track is strangely elegant, the percussion bogged down and sluggish but transcended by soaring strings. Its not hard to imaging it as a travelling song, to-ing and fro-ing on the swells of a dark and ominous sea.

The knotted threads of ‘At Odds’ give way to an eerie siren call, the closest thing to vocals on the record, before ‘A Tense Spiral’ sounds exactly as advertised, a taut and escalating track that conjures images of a thousand circling seabirds, a harbinger of an oncoming storm. ‘The Fog of Our Primes’ then rises out of the murk, quivering and quavering like a water spout, while ‘Evaporate’ has a crystalline sound, perhaps the soundtrack to a new and strange land, one of frozen rivers and mountains of ice. Finale ‘Furthest Shore’ ends proceedings with something that sounds like the soundtrack to some far-flung northern island, all rugged hills and dagger-sharp outcrops and a howling wind. It is a fitting finish that captures the beauty in the harsh and unforgiving force of nature.

As with all of Fritch’s music, Ill Tides is a surprisingly cinematic experience, narratives snaking through each song despite their wordless nature. You can get it now on tape or download from Lost Tribe Sound via the William Ryan Fritch Bandcamp page.

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This week’s EP was curated by Jeremy Sroka, the mastermind behind HI54LOFI, probably the most essential blog/radio station on the internet. Jeremy also runs 95EH, a blog-form homage to his new hometown Kimberly, BC. Check it out and feel jealous that we can’t all live there!

Packing / Unpacking

by Jeremy Sroka

1) Song with a name in the title

Marie – Townes Van Zandt (with Willie Nelson)

I thought that the lack of specific-ness for this song prompt was going to stress me out. I mean, there are a lot of songs with names in the title, so how was I going to pick one? I started off my thinking process by wishing that there would have been a more specific ‘name of famous person’ or something filter, but then I remembered how much I love this Townes & Willie collaboration ‘Marie’. And too think I was briefly considered giving this spot to The Goo Goo Dolls ‘Name’.

2) Song that reminds you of your favourite video game

The Alley (War) – Big Trouble In Little China Soundtrack (John Carpenter)

I have not played video games since I lived at home and had a video game console. I only made it as far as a Playstation 1, but my fondest joystick memories are probably the Double Dragon marathons spent on the Nintendo. And since I just included a metal version of the Double Dragon theme song for my Rigby mix for The Grey Estates  I figured I better go with something else that reminds me of that era of personal peak video gaming. And it turns out it was the soundtrack to Big Trouble In Little China. I guess Kurt Russell fathered a lot of us kids born in the 80s (metaphorically speaking, but maybe literally too).

3) Song that sounds like the bottom of the ocean

Heavy – William Ryan Fritch

When I saw this song prompt I immediately thought of William Ryan Fritch. When it comes to floating & falling, nobody’s music captures those feelings better. I haven’t been to the bottom of the ocean myself, but I imagine it sounds pretty heavy down there.

Aberdeen – Mando Diao

I like to say that I’m an excellent dancer, but the reality is that I’m (probably) not. I figure it’s a mixture of not being much of a ‘dance=y’ person to begin + rarely feeling comfortable being ‘dance-y’ in public even when I’m feeling a little ‘dance-y’ on the inside (i.e. drunk-y). Maybe if places put on tunes like this Mando Diao one, instead of some Top 40 hit that came with instructions on how to dance to it (instructions I haven’t read), maybe I could become the excellent dancer I lie about already being. Or maybe I’ll just continue doing my best dancing at our flat to songs like this.

5) Song you’d play during the apocalypse

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – Cat Power

I actually made a little ‘apocalypse ‘ mix on 8tracks a few years ago (well, that was for the rapture, but same difference). Anyways, this song is not on that 8tracks mix, but I can imagine putting it on my headphones and walking cinematically slow down some apocalyptic / raptured high street.

6) Song from at least 20 years ago

Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues – Danny O’Keefe

I only came across this gem from ’67 within the last year, which, considering the age I turned in 2016 and the line “yr not a kid at 33’, the timing of this discovery feels timely. Throw in the fact that my girlfriends name is ‘Charlie’ and that we’ve spent the last 4 years hopping around Europe and Canada (including an extended trip back to Denmark due to an unexpected loss in Charlie’s family tree), this song lands a lot of jabs to my head every listen.

Here’s the whole thing in one go so you can hit repeat, sit back, and take it all in.

Be sure to read everything Jeremy Sroka does on HI54LOFI and 95EH, and check back next week for the next Mystery Mini Mix.

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Remember, we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, so don’t hesitate to get in touch and let you know your favourite tracks from June. Or July. Or whenever.

Tracklisting:

1) Gofer – Yucky Duster
2) The End Parts One and Two – Paper Bee
3) Pas De Deux – Brenda’s Friend
4) Mostly Homely – Exam Season
5) rosy – Long Neck
6) Cool It! – Terry vs. Tori
7) best thought – Honeyuck
8) buttery sprouts – Trace Mountains
9) Green Ennui – Flying Circles
10) Memento Mori – Jake Bellissimo
11) Same Light – Tim Lannen
12) Golden Car – Tincho
13) Can’t Take My Mind – Skyjelly
14) E.V.I.L – Medicine Boy
15) Bike Thief – Frederick Squire
16) Oh Well – Adeline Hotel
17) Offering – Loone
18) Something Profound & Meaningful – See You At Home
19) Bowl of Plums – Ben Seretan
20) Muted Colours – Chain Wallet
21) Little One – Aaron Holm
22) Fear O’ the Light – Katie Dey
23) Protracted – William Ryan Fritch
24) Dizzy – Danielle Fricke
25) Uncanny – Sister Grotto
26) Hands in Our Names – Karima Walker

The post June 2016 Roundup: A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Clean War arrives during uncertain times – hollow leaders, blurred friends and foes, a heavy mix apathy and aggression divide much of our society, a need to label people, places, and ideas so quickly in order to usher them away to our like and dislike piles with no more than a crooked word from our sponsors.”

Clean War addresses a wide range of societal issues, all linked in ways that become clear as you listen and digest what’s going on. Take for example the ruminations on war and art, of how our short 21st Century attention spans reduce all art (and especially music) to brief summations which are quickly lost in the tempest of the internet, and how the same willingness to forget and move on extend to the life and (admittedly mostly) death concerns of war. Like all great artists, William Ryan Fritch focuses on questions and personal feelings, apparently fully aware that preaching answers to questions as big as these is futile. Instead, he shakes loose his thoughts and emotions. As the label put it “[he] must purge these dark psalms in order to not be consumed by them”.

‘Squander’ opens the album with atmospheric drone, sounding like echoes of some catastrophic event reaching out from the past, echoes we’d perhaps do well to heed when looking toward the future. ‘Storms’ gathers like an ominous weather front, eventually bursting forth in a great thudding, clanging downpour.

“For with the clearest skies, and the most sterile whites…
Are when looks are most deceiving and danger is most nigh.
May it’s shroud of dank and dark surround us still.
We pray for storms”

‘Blue Birth’ sounds downright ghostly, with its swirling atmosphere and disembodied handclaps. Fritch’s vocals are initially wordless but eventually coalesce into decipherable lyrics fraught with a macabre mysticism (“A blue birth thrust into the world too soon / A red death culled from this life too soon”). ‘Our Strange Progression’ begins slow and creepy and blooms into something grand and somehow wonky, its lyrics like something from a newly-translated classical text, while a ghostly choir opens ‘A Slow Collapse’, the track rumbling to life with galloping drums and dissonant instrumentation. Fritch’s vocals sit at the centre, floating out in all directions, the softest, smoothest element of all. That’s followed by ‘The Fall’, another instrumental that sounds like little more than wind in the branches of a tree, while ‘Protracted’ is grand and sweeping, like the motion of a turbulent sea.

The intro to the title track sounds somehow haunted, murmurs and wails and squeaking iron gates and spooky midnight clocktower tolls. Eventually Fritch’s vocals enter and the track takes on a Gothic majesty which aims headlong at the themes I mentioned previously.

“There is no clean war.
There is no absolute truth
There is no victimless deed
but we are deaf to the echoes of each”

‘Aftermath’ is about as apt a title as I could think of for the closing track. It sounds like the soundtrack to dust-flecked film of the devastation of some needless war, injured soldiers and orphaned children and cities reduced to rubble.

In short, the album is a triumph. It’s wonderful to know that there are still people out there concerned with more than Souncloud playcounts and impressing PR drones. William Ryan Fritch is an artist, and as such his work demands effort on the part of the listener as well as the creator. For all the gloom and fog present on the album, it still clings to a sense of hope, meaning it’s a rewarding and ultimately heartening experience. As they’ve put this last thought so eloquently, I’ll leave the guys at Lost Tribe Sound have the last word:

“Clean War is an undeniably human album, proudly displaying it wounds and disgust…Yet in the mire, a gentler tone resides, one that knows there is still good in humanity. He leaves us with a solemn prayer – a call to be decent to one another, to be more than hollow beasts, to upset a future of poor repetitious behaviors.”

Clean War is out now on Lost Tribe Sound and you can get it from the William Ryan Fritch Bandcamp page.

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I’m always amazed by Umhoefer’s ability to make his sprawling songs sound so focused. I mean, there’s not an ounce of fat on this track despite the fact it breaks the 12 minute barrier. Although the track arguably isn’t a single song at all, but a neat package of three songs which meld and dissolve into one another in dream-like fashion, doors opening not just into different rooms but into different houses altogether. It could just be the way my brain is wired, but OE music has this trance-like quality that is almost impossible to describe. It’s music that isn’t satisfied with making pretty sounds in the background, that gets right to the root of things.

The EP begins with a segment titled, ‘slept in shoes to catch it in The Dark’, a lean and wiry guitar line at the fore, lower rumbles in the background. Umhoefer delivers the vocals in his usual insistent manner, lyrics vague and indeterminate but steeped in meaning, like the lines of some arcane invocation:

What was the omen, and
what did the stars read?
Where did the river turn, and
where were the trees?
When did the day end, and
what was the moon’s phase, and

When did the tone change?

The track also provides the first glimpse of a new side to Old Earth. The move to California has allowed Umhoefer to work with a new group of collaborators, one of whom (credited as “Lopez”) provides female vocals which serve as the ideal counterpoint to Umhoefer’s. There is also help from people ambiguously named Burnett, Moen and Fritch (who I believe to be musician/composer/producer William Ryan Fritch).

Things take a new direction after around four and a half minutes, segueing into a segment called ‘demystified!’. Here the female vocals become even more prominent and provide perhaps the closest thing to a chorus Old Earth has ever produced, “Come with me we’ll sail away / I know a place without a name”. Then, around the 8 minute mark, some instrument starts whirring like an agitated bee and the track shifts quickly with hand claps and insistent guitars. This is the beginning of the final segment, ‘One kinda dream inna place lie thisss’ and this time it’s Lopez’s turn to chant vocals,

“Bright lights
Lost sight
Crossed eyes
Cold fights
Low cries
Oh why why why why?”

Umhoefer then brings proceedings to a close with a typically surreal final line, “Undercut in overtone, the kind of hum that isn’t fully groan / Down a hall that doesn’t way, we’re windowing a rope to hang a sway”. Make of that what you will, but be sure that none of this is simple gibberish. Put …until they’re called on repeat and listen and listen and I guarantee you’ll start to divine its meaning.

Get the EP from the Old Earth Bandcamp page and get one of the nice limited edition prints while you’re at it?

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