A meetings of minds and cultures well-suited to Alasdair Roberts’ syncretistic nature, The Old Fabled River melds Celtic and Scandinavian intuitions of culture and music.

Responding to the invitation of Norwegian fiddler Hans Kjorstad, Alasdair made an almost preternatural connection with a group of musicians well-versed in folk, jazz and free-playing. The diverse musical backgrounds deeply inform this collection of Roberts’ originals and Scottish and Norwegian traditional song. Nicking a spiritual conceit off Saint Teresa, "Orison of Union" notes love’s human frailty,... (read more)

Today, alongside Joan Shelley and Nathan Salsburg, Matt and Bonny present the “Watch What Happens” b/w “Stay On My Shore” digital single. On their rendition of Superwolves’ “Watch What Happens,” Joan and Nathan slip inside the skin of the tune, adapting the original’s noirish air into a thorny folk classicism and communicating the message of self-reliance with equal parts wonder and stoic, wind-strewn beauty, streaming like nature intended from their hands and mouths. For “Stay On My Shore,” Bonny and Matt unfurl one of... (read more)

On two instruments rarely used in tandem, Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor evoke a new fusion of genres meant to open the mind to new mental connections. Music comes from, and goes to, everywhere. With this in mind, and with the Moroccan guimbri and the Zimbabwean mbira in hand, they move through foundational playing fields – traditional, jazz, ambient – to create something truly diverse in nature, blending the essence of all the roots with inspiration, spun out in the rhythms of dance and meditation,... (read more)

Trading the crushed harmonics of their basement tapes for studio-grade mics, overdubs in the mix, and only slightly less-bruised melodies, Birds of Maya's roiling essence not only survives, but thrives, non-stop, on Valdez, stuttering, screaming and stomping through six circuitous numbers. With their undulated and unfettered riffage mutated into raw power, Birds project their sound to burst through the basement and spill into the streets.
 

"Please Come In" is pulled from way back in early pre-Mayan consciousness, and... (read more)