Standing tall against an open sky, E.R. Jurken and his spectral tenor (refracted via multiple overdubs) move across an oft-deserted soundscape, leaving behind them the footfalls of incandescent orchestral pop music (with the orchestra mostly erased). On his lonesome, Jurken's formidable energy populates the landscape with choruses of vocal color on I Stand Corrected.
 

"Right Through" is an exemplary E.R. Jurken miniature in full band rock mode: a slice of bedroom... (read more)

Mind Maintenance is the new duo consisting of Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society) and Chad Taylor (Chicago Underground Duo, Chad Taylor Trio). This is where the music begins, but Mind Maintenance can’t be described simply as a summation of it's parts and players. When you put on the sound, you’ll know what we’re saying - you'll notice how immediate and meditative it is; how simple, how "in the room," and how the natural buzz of each instrument sits remarkably well against... (read more)

WANTED: a valid reevaluation of the depiction of life in America's old west! With "Cowboy", a single from Gold Record, Bill Callahan acknowledges the long-prevailing fantasy, now in the province of the late movie, in itself an artifact of a former time. Dryer than a quarter-century of drought, Bill's song echoes the sweet melancholy of that vision, subtly decontextualizing the images of freedom and manifest destiny, allowing us to see them as a fictive projection - one that only exists in our collective mind.
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Keys, the forthcoming collaborative album from Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles, showcases the duo's deep knowledge of folk traditions and their congenial improvisational coalescence. Performing only a handful of times before embarking on this project, Bowles and MacKay together play like a seasoned old pair of pickers, with an uncanny ability to bolster each other's expression through sympathetic and expansively spiritual notes.
 

On the third single, "Dowsing", a favored rural pastime gives this contemplative instrumental its name. The song expands upon an... (read more)