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Drawing sonic inspiration from the introspective and experimental tones of R.E.M’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Radiohead's In Rainbows, Pitcher and a team of collaborators craft a music that is both ethereal and grounded, sweeping and intimate. The album's atmospheric production and detailed arrangements will immediately appeal to fans of The National, while its lyrical intimacy and narrative quality will resonate with those who appreciate The Decemberists' storytelling prowess, as Pitcher investigates an imagined world where water is scarce, and birds are the dominant species. The album's songs are a journey through the corridors of angst and introspection, featuring Pitcher's signature blend of poetic lyricism and diary-like reflections. Each track serves as a chapter in a larger narrative, weaving together personal anecdotes with universal themes on parenthood, masculinity, environmentalism, and nature in a way that is both haunting and profoundly relatable.
180gram vinyl, with six page booklet!
Lost Forest Records is excited to announce the release of the split LP from Shumoto and Rambutan. Shumoto is veteran guitarist, sound artist, filmmaker and instrument builder Jefferson Pitcher. Rambutan is the solo project for Eric Hardiman. Each have extensive musical histories, but this is their first shared release. Pitcher studied improvisation and composition with Pauline Oliveros, Tomie Hahn, and Neil Rolnick. He has performed and recorded with Oliveros, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Scott Amendola, Christian Kiefer, and many more. Hardiman runs the Tape Drift Records imprint, plays in several current bands (Burnt Hills/Century Plants/Sky Furrows/Spiral Wave Nomads), and has recently released a run of collaborative improvisation recordings with Jeff Case (Burnt Hills) and John Olson (Wolf Eyes).
The LP offers up one side from each artist, and is the result of many years of friendship, shared inspiration and discussion. Pitcher’s two contributions on the Shumoto side set the mood with deep and spacious guitar tones combined with hypnotic and meditative lyrics taken from a Ben Jahn poem. Hardiman’s three tracks on the Rambutan side continue his explorations mixing improvised guitar and electronics honed on numerous micro-releases for a range of labels. Taken together, the two sides form a whole that emphasizes abstraction, texture and mood while also offering intricate details for continued examination. The overall effect is deeply informed by each artist’s past work in the improv, experimental, indie rock, and psych realms, emerging on the other side with a gentle, introspective, probing and ultimately uplifting record. It is also a very personal record for each artist, representing a culmination of their shared obsession and joy with the wonders of sound and repetition.
The inaugural recording from Shumoto and The Byrde, the improvised guitar duo of Jefferson Pitcher and Austin Hatch. With their commitment to deep listening, and a constant and strict adherence to simplicity and space, the long stretching out of time, This recoding feels incredibly present and alive. Shumoto and The Byrde masterfully create their own unique blend of drones, boiler room rumblings, underwater screech and gurgle, distant echoes, and the gentle, interwoven melodies that reside at the centre of their work. While the sections with guitars sound at times composed, it is through restraint and attentive listening that the two manage to blend their free improvisations so seamlessly. The sound world created by Shumoto and the Byrde is one of wondrous hidden complexities, ripe for exploration, amidst the low frequency drones, and crackles, the sound of giant insects, with achingly beautiful and nostalgic melodies sprinkled throughout. This is a contemplative record, one that brings the listener into the cave of Shumoto and the Byrde, one visited by Pauline Oliveros in her dreams, and one that has the power to carry you to The Place of the Way, wherever it may be.
“The final piece of this double album, “Mountain Above Sky,” brings the preceedings back to how it all began and is perhaps the most heartfelt tribute to Oliveros. Sparse chords and sung duet vocals make for the focus, balancing the large and small sound dynamics perfectly. the performance matches the mood in a sad, beautiful, and intimate way that, by its conclusion, features accordion in a final, appropriate tribute to her. Pauline Oliveros may not be associated with the guitar as an instrument, but Jefferson Pitcher and Austin Hatch have clearly taken on her methodology to sound and art and translated it to their respective instruments. Like her own works, Shumoto & The Byrde encourages deep listening and give the space for that to happen throughout this heartfelt, powerful record. The Sea Will Carry Me is the result, in the form of a loving, fitting tribute to Oliveros and her work that I am sure she would be extremely proud of in every possible way.” ~Brainwashed.
“One History Of Troy has been separated into six evolving compositions, enhanced with sensible portions of musique concrete, free improvisations, and pleasant ambiance. This comprehensive collection is a compromise between composition and improvisation, dualities between well-organized chaos and relaxing melodies, and certainly an exploration through a playful world of experimental music. Each composition carries certain melancholic feel, but also a lot of sacral moments that were achieved by the astonishing sound of acoustic instruments. These moments are followed by various improvisations on the aforementioned instruments and subtle dosages of field recordings. Chen, Pitcher and Van Nort are operating as a singular organism throughout the entire album, their sense for balance between instruments and intuitive abilities to implement all the right elements into the following segments are simply beyond comprehension. The entire album has been dedicated to the late Pauline Oliveros, with whom all three musicians collaborated during her lifetime. One History Of Troy has been published by Attenuation Circuit, it comes on a grey marbled vinyl and it’s been housed in a gloriously looking cardboard sleeve. It’s such a treat for all the fans of musique concrete, free improvisation, and ambient music, so don’t miss this one out.“ ~ Thoughts, Words, Actions
Second Tape Drift outing from this amazing guitarist, and we could not be more thrilled with the results. A solo recording from the depth of winter, isolated in rural Canada. Resulting from a process-oriented project (improvising every Sunday for a set period of time, coupled with a companion piece of writing for each track), this one goes deep in its unique exploration of prepared guitar, tumbling overtones, chord relationships, hushed ambience, and sheer beauty. All tracks were improvised in one take, with no editing or overdubs. Pitcher’s full command of the instrument is never at question, and his tone is instantly recognizable as his own. Yet there’s no need to show off here – these thoughtful forays into particular moods/themes are gorgeous, compelling, and highly addictive. Comes with Pitcher’s original companion essays as a booklet. A fascinating and very intimate window into the mind of one of today’s most essential improvising guitarists. -Eric Hardiman, Tape Drift Records
"Long overdue for release, this sublime disc is perhaps the single most beautiful item in the TD catalog. Pitcher has a long history in music, playing with Christian Kiefer and many others over the years, but this is surely a landmark career high point. It’s certainly the kind of record others would dream about making, but never achieve. Aided with incredible subtlety and finesse by a handful of musicians (including Mike Bullock and Kiefer), Pitcher has created what can only be defined as a masterpiece. It’s that good. Inspired by a year spent living in Spain, this recording captures a magic that is both intangible and joyous in its beauty. Guitar is the central focus, but his partners lend so much to the overall sound and communicate so well that it feels like they’ve been playing together for decades. Never busy, Pitcher leaves room for every note to breathe, and weaves each unique thread in the record together as only a master can do. Words fail when trying to describe music this powerful. Each disc is housed in a heavy brown paper inside a vellum envelope and has a unique photograph taken by Pitcher while in Spain." -Eric Hardiman, Tape Drift Records
Christian Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher aren't the most obvious of collaborators. Kiefer is an indie-folk balladeer that parlays his gentle voice and dusky acoustic guitar into haunting blurs of tone and melody (think a dronier Iron & Wine). Pitcher is a Northern Californian sound artist that explores the possibilities of field recordings, feedback, and prepared guitars. Then again, Kiefer habitually renders the naturalistic strange, while Pitcher makes the strange sound natural. On this nautically themed collaboration, which purportedly draws inspiration from the poetry of Pablo Neruda and the fiction of Jose Saramago, Kiefer and Pitcher find each other precisely at the seam where their mirror-image aesthetics meet. As a result, there are no jarring moments when one collaborator overtakes the other. To All Dead Sailors displays a fluid undulation from starry indie-folk to inert sound collage and back again, never breaking its lulling wave-like motion along the way.
Kiefer and Pitcher share vocal duties on the album, and their voices will make or break this project for most listeners: In a mostly understated record, they're as overt as a neon signs, and their inflections can be tender to the point of preciosity. But as long as you've a decently high threshold for the saccharine, they're terrific-- both singers sound gracefully open and velvety, playing off of each other so seamlessly that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. The vocal presence on this album can evoke Rufus Wainwright when it's low, with subtle vibrato; Ben Gibbard when it's high and airy; Holopaw's John Orth when tensed and straining, always moving without friction between these modes.
To All Dead Sailors, mirroring the singers' tone, is dense with longing. Each song seems to strain against the boundary of its simple instrumental palette, as if the depth of feeling contained inside exceeds the size of the well. After a mood-setting field recording of waves and seagulls, "Ship Under Sand" slowly gathers a melancholy electric guitar figure and bending foghorn-like tones into an ominous dirge, which spills into "The Captain", a chiming hymn that features the first instance of the recurring lyrical and melodic motif, "Oh Captain, bring me home." Kiefer and Pitcher invoke this captain throughout the album, alternately in tones of salvation and damnation: "The Captain leads the ship into the rocks/ The watchmen will sleep there with the fishes," Kiefer warns on the banjo-flecked lullaby "Carpenters and Sailors". "Erendira and the Ocean" features the first reprise of the "Oh Captain" refrain, this time amid bright flashes of nylon strings. The sparse instrumentation and existential despair of "Burial at Sea" evoke Damien Jurado at his most retiring, and "Astrolabe" is a churning trail song (although the trail happens to lead to Mars).
Pitcher's experimental presence flickers through all of these otherwise trad tunes, and becomes overt in the elegant abstract passages that interleave them. "Marconi Brings the Cypher" finds Kiefer's thinned-out voice tracing a fragile melody through vanishing chimes; it's equal parts the submerged rumble of Sailor Winters and the nebulous discomfort of early Nick Drake. "The Engineer's Dream" barely exists; it's just a music box tinkle buried in a distant roar. The curtains of reverb-heavy guitar on "The Mermaid and the Drunks" grind down nauseously, like a radio expending the last of its battery charge. Given the glut of indie-folk records that render the sea's mysteries in similar trappings-- sampled birds, weary harmonies, and dusty acoustic strings-- you couldn't be blamed for finding the conceit a bit tiresome by now. But this duo's sly embellishments, potent voices, and weighty songwriting makes To All Dead Sailors well-worth enlisting for one more voyage. Bonus points for not succumbing to the siren song of the sea chantey, one of indie music's most overused tricks as of late. ~Pitchfork
