Melchior, Dan

Melchior, Dan

CB Odyssey

Feeding Tube

***"One of the great joys of the ever-evolving catalog of DAN MELCHIOR is hearing where in the spectrum of styles that he has mastered each record falls. From studio recordings to lo-fidelity home experiments, full band rockers or plaintive solo excursions, fans never know what they are going to get until the needle drops. Those of us who have followed Dan on his prolific pathways are ready for anything but always assured that the spirit of the artist himself, one unique enough to be its own in any form, will deliver and somehow deal with the ramifications of an increasingly maddening world. Dan's first full length of 2021, CB Odyssey, (co-released by the Feeding Tube/Sophomore Lounge) continues in his fine tradition of excellence, this time finding the middle ground of his stylistic extremes. A master of modern song-craft, Melchior returns with CB Odyssey to deliver a further treatise on the agonizing futility of contemporary life. Neither pandering to sentimentality nor cultural trends, Melchior embraces the crass absurdity of modern existence, delivering a multi-faceted view of the everyday. These scenes offer illuminations into the hilarious, the macabre, the pointlessly hip, and most elegantly, the details of the normalcy that few writers of our time seem to be able to capture. The cast of characters on CB Odyssey range from middle-aged self-satisfied artists who have never courted popularity to woke millennials trying to teach mosquitos that it's not nice to bite. The listener is taken to vistas never before traveled such as...

Melchior, Dan

Bard Fawg

Limited Appeal

***DAN MELCHIOR returns with a one-sided 12". The blank side of the record is silk screened with an image of one of Dan's drawings. Edition of 234 copies.

Melchior, Dan

Road Not Driving

Ever / Never

***“Last time we checked in with DAN MELCHIOR, he was Playing The Greys. What has he been up to lately? Melchior is as aesthetically restless as he is endlessly creative, so in between recording an album with Austin TX art-punk trio Spray Paint and a myriad of tape and vinyl releases, Dan found the time to gift Ever/Never with another classic slice of Melchiorcore (please, shoot the messenger for that one). Road Not Driving is a 12” EP that covers a fair amount of ground during its runtime. 'I Got A Feeling' starts out as a feel-bad ode to, well, feeling bad, and then finds itself truly sinking into the muck as the track distorts beyond all reason, until coming around full circle at the conclusion. Climate change has got us all down, but at least you can commiserate with the guitar slicks and (gulf jet)stream-of-consciousness lyrics of 'Another Oil Spill.' In the icily observant 'Cold Town,' Dan’s previous locale of the lake-effect Midwest pokes its head through the (grey) clouds. The storm clouds hover over side two’s 'Relics,' which finds Dan casting about for some kind of connection. Those bleak months—half a year really—can weigh a man down but they leave plenty of time to come up with creative ways of dealing with the isolation. Yet, when connection comes in the form of 'Bus Stop Ghouls,' perhaps it’s preferable to be alone after all. Melchior closes out this potent dip into his stewing brain with the title track and...

Melchior, Dan

Born Under A Grey Sign

Monofonus Press

***"When this record showed up unsolicited let's just say it was a no brainer. Born Under a Grey Sign shows DAN MELCHIOR confident enough to do whatever he damn well pleases. He'll go from singing a Sea Shanty directly into drum machine chaos, all the while keeping things rooted somehow in his brand of folk/rock/garage whatever. We love this record, and it's an honor to release it."

Melchior, Dan

Plays The Greys

Ever / Never

***DAN MELCHIOR is artist as perpetual motion machine. We could say “shark,” but Dan doesn’t sniff for blood in the water. Instead, he is inviting you to his private lake; his solace relies on his relentless creativity. Whether painting, writing, collaging or recording, Dan offers nothing less than words, images and sounds transmitted directly from his subconscious, but filtered through the rigorous process of a true artist. Dan’s latest offering is a superb collection of songs and sonic vignettes that dips down deep into life’s trenches. Here, where light has to fight to be noticed, misery, monotony and melancholy mingle and bleed into one another. Accordingly, Dan doesn’t play the blues, he plays the greys. Plays The Greys is a patchwork album, but don’t let that imply carelessness. Each odd juxtaposition serves a purpose and illuminates its surroundings like a torch in the night. Part one and part two of the title track are perfect examples of Dan’s decidedly non-academic approach to musique concrete’s a-musical gestures. Field recordings bump up against back-porch guitar plucking that morphs into radio declarations by the good Christians among us. Praise be. Edition of 500 copies.   In more ways than one, “Death Has No Mercy” is the center of the album. Midway through its hazy meanderings, “Death…” jumps into an uptempo backwoods jaunt. It’s good to know that the guitar is always there, providing a means for expression and catharsis. Suffering in recent years through immense personal tragedy, Dan channels all that pain...

Melchior, Dan

For Letha

Vin Du Select Qualitite

***Four guitar instrumentals from master songwriter Dan Melchior, housed in a handmade, letterpress sleeve limited to 300 copies.

Melchior, Dan

The Souls Of Birds And Mice

Siltbreeze

Since 2011’s Assemblage Blues, Dan Melchior has proceeded to document the scope of vulnerability, carrying the torch of DIY through territory explored previously only in the wake of Pierre Schaeffer.  The Souls of Birds and Mice isn’t composed of elements so much as it is composed of the composing of elements. This is the sound of the digital workflow, transparent composition; wrenching the processing of Muura or Doc Wör Mirran and dismantling the investigative passivity. One could draw a comparison straight to Cornelius Cardew or Li Daiguo, but that’s just because Melchior’s work is so laterally referential it slows down any pull to deconstructing the singular voice to simple candidness. And it all ends with some of the most perfect psychedelic guitar work ever paired with helicopter sounds.  With the whole array of structural speculation drifting past, recall that all spatial language betrays—but who needs translation when the instinct purifies? However unreliable this container, it’s a given that this is Melchior at his most impassioned.

Melchior, Dan

Slow Down Tiger

Starlight Furniture Company

In which The Dauphin of Durham completes, once and for all, the long and complicated process of self-extrication from music’s No Exit—song structure. While his apprenticeship in that increasingly nostalgic moat was hardly time ill-spent and did indeed serve him well, Melchior’s current trajectory is elsewhere, as evidenced by his exquisite A Squirrel Could Never Be a Disappointment to Me and the astral crop circularity of Lloyd Pack. On Slow Down Tiger the forces of centrifuge, gravity and vacuums form a welcoming committee at the gates of dark plumbing otherwise known as Beyond. The first side-long piece, “Tongues” congeals into a grand mosaic, a kind of reverse Pangaea of mostly dissenting voices: Chilean poet Nicanor Parra; a clip from Sult, the Swedish film based on Knut Hamsun’s Hunger; Russian absurdist / surrealist Daniil Kharms; Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins; author of modernist masterpiece Briggflatts Basil Bunting; the eternally disenchanted Alan Dugan; Victorian heritage booster John Betjeman; and field recordings of the 1990 poll tax riots in London. It is a welcome new outpost in the cluttered frontier of found-sound tape composition that includes such lucid beacons as Daniel Steven Crafts’s Soap Opera Symphony, Frank Bedal’s track on the LAFMS comp Blorp Esette, Gus Coma’s double-CD on Paradigm, and Tempo Furioso by Martin Davorin Jagodic. On the flip, the obvious touchstone of yet another side-long track, “Hospital Poem,” is minimalist drone à la Basinski, Harold Budd or Tony Conrad, though Melchior’s very personal approximation of the subtlest of ectoplasmic melodies repeated over and...

Melchior, Dan

The Heron (doesn’t Care When The Woman Stamps Her Boot)

Limited Appeal

***DAN MELCHIOR’s (in collaboration with his wife LETHA RODMAN) latest called The Heron (Doesn't Care When the Woman Stamps Her Boot). Dan’s music continues to evolve and is very much a separate entity from some of his earlier blues based work. While most people know Dan's garage work with Billy Childish, Holly Golightly and his own band Broke Revue, this record is certainly more on the experimental side of things in terms of sound. An edition of 231 copies;. We hand cut and constructed the inner sleeve, and attached a photograph that Dan took to it. Then a window was hand cut hand in the outer jacket to reveal/frame Dan's photo. The record centers are hand stamped (with an image based on a drawing of Dan's).

Melchior, Dan

Assemblage Blues

Siltbreeze

INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!! “As Dan Melchior continues to kick the Medway gutbucket to the curb, he is also willfully absorbing all manner’ve underground cankerous crud along the way. For those endeared to wallet chains and crisp, cuffed jeans, this has been tantamount to heresy. But for thems what’s embraced the sounds of “the new Dan,” said aberrations are as welcome to caustic ears as a cold beer is to a set’ve parched lips. And while last year’s Visionary Pangs LP (released with Das Menace on the S-S label) was a grower and a half, Assemblage Blues snuffs it as if it were no more’n a sneeze in the wind.  “This here LP seemingly vibes from such leftfield Blighty heavies as Instant Automatons and L. Voag as well as the dark side of Alex Chilton (think Dusted in Memphis) and the 3:00 A.M. shudder of Prominent Disturbance. Within the canon of the Siltbreeze label, Melchior’s magnificent malarkey on Assemblage Blues has secured him a spot somewhere between The Shadow Ring and Jim Shepard. The pone don’t sizzle much hotter than there. And the sneezin’ is nil. “I’d bet this ain’t your Dad’s Dan Melchior. Not by a mile. But if it is, it’s only ’cause he’s back from the future. Just ask him. He’s glowin’ to tell ya.” —Roland Woodbe, Professional Writer