Louise, Sarah

Louise, Sarah

Earth Bow

Earth Bow

At first glance, Sarah Louise might seem an unlikely candidate to credit technology as inspiration for her new album, Earth Bow. After all, she has lived in rural Appalachia for the last decade, foraging numerous species of wild mushroom, concocting medicine from plants she gathers, and performing what she terms “Earth Practices” to deepen her relationship with the natural world. But it is precisely her ability to find connections between false binaries that makes this album so novel and richly immersive.  Louise conceived Earth Bow as an interconnected ecosystem, meant to evolve, interact and grow. Known for her inventive guitar playing, vocal harmonies and electronic experiments, it was her use of the SP-404SX sampler that became a primary inspiration for the album’s woven nature. “Improvising with the 404 during live shows allows me to collaborate with the music as a living system, almost the way generative music works,” she says. “I kept finding more and more samples that worked together and realized I wanted to connect the entire record—and that there were many ways it could be connected.”  Through this process, what began as eight core songs blossomed into two sweeping suites. Samples—denizens of her electronic forest—move around the record with changing context like words in a sestina or phrases in the I Ching, revealing new connections with each listen. Mesmeric sounds abound on Earth Bow, from analog synth tones, to digitally manipulated sonics that she stretches and layers with a painterly touch. These electronic sounds inhabit the same environment...

Louise, Sarah

Field Guide

Scissor Tail Editions

This is a vinyl reissue of the quickly sold-out cassette by North Carolina based 12-string guitarist and multi instrumentalist Sarah Louise. Field Guide is her first solo record before releasing a solo record on VDSQ and her debut duo album with Sally Anne Morgan (Black Twig Pickers) as House And Land on Thrill Jockey earlier this year.  “When needed, her fingers move quickly on Field Guide, picking up the pace of the wordless conversation, then slow to a moody pace just the same. Lush, rural landscapes are brought to mind. So is happiness.” —Tiny Mix Tapes   “Sarah Henson learned to play guitar and banjo at the foot of the black mountains in North Carolina. That’s how the press text I’ve found, starts. Under the name Sarah Louise, she released two beautiful folk albums and especially her latest release Field Guide is first and foremost a great fingerstyle, solo guitar album. Her music is definitely colored by the land and the nature that surrounds her (at least that’s what I know about Asheville, NC and the Blue Ridge Mountains). I imagine a creek that tumbles down the hills, glistening in the sun. That’s what her guitar playing sounds like. That’s probably why she named it Field Guide.” —Dying For Bad Music  “Her new album Field Guide is coming out in the New Year on Scissor Tail Editions and it feels like a lost disc from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Some of the tracks are...