Dicristina Stair Builders

Bunyan, Vashti

Heartleap

Dicristina Stair Builders

Nine years after ‘Lookaftering’, her last album of new material, legendary British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan returns with a breathtaking new LP. Recorded largely in her home studio, ‘Heartleap’ is a unique and entrancing collection of ten songs forming what Vashti is adamant will be her final album. Vashti’s third album follows her rediscovery - after thirty years in the wilderness - with the 2000 re-release of ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ (a bona fide cult classic that made # 53 in the Observer Music monthly’s ‘top 100 British albums of all time’), and the critical success of 2005’s ‘Lookaftering’. With ‘Heartleap’ she has delivered an album with a classic sound, where – for the first time – she herself has been in control of the whole process, from writing and arranging to playing and recording. Working predominantly from a studio set up in her Edinburgh home, the record was slowly pieced together, and reveals an artist at her peak, capturing her songs within fluid settings that masterfully marry content and form. Both ‘JADD’  and ‘Lookaftering’ saw Vashti‘s songs arranged and framed by others. Joe Boyd’s production and Robert Kirby’s arranging of the former remain timelessly classy, whilst Max Richter’s elegantly beautiful production of Lookaftering was enhanced by contributions from a raft of supporting artists - all eagerly adding their colours. Vashti is justly proud of ‘Lookaftering’, but ‘Heartleap’ is a more personal record, standing solely on the merits and patient endeavour of its author rather than being buoyed by and filtered...

Baim, Matteah

Laughing Boy

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Laughing Boy, the second solo album from Matteah Baim, was recorded in Chicago, where it was produced, arranged, and mixed by Baim with engineer Jamie Carter. The album features performances by Butchy Fuego, Robert A. A. Lowe, Leyna Marika Papach, Rob Doran, Emmett Kelly, Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Birdie Lawson, and Rose Lazar. Expanding on the sounds hinted at with her previous band, Metallic Falcons, and her first solo record, Death of The Sun (DiCristina, 2007), Baim has created her most lush and beautiful recordings yet with Laughing Boy.   Matteah Baim was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1996, at the age of 17, she moved to California to study painting and drawing at the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduating, Baim moved to New York where she met Sierra Casady. In 2005, the duo began to write music together and formed the "soft metal" Metallic Falcons. Voodoo Eros released their first record, Desert Doughnuts, in 2006, recorded in Brooklyn, New Mexico, and Chicago, with performances by Antony, Devendra Banhart, Jana Hunter, and Greg Rogove.  After the Metallic Falcons disbanded, Baim moved to Los Angeles and began writing and recording material (both at her Venice Beach home and at Chicago's CarterCo studio) for Death of the Sun. She spent the next two years touring and writing material for Laughing Boy, working on music for several films, and exhibiting drawings. Baim currently lives and works in New York.

Mv & Ee With The Golden Road

Drone Trailer

Dicristina Stair Builders

Orbiting the earth in Vermont is Matt "MV" Valentine, once the brawn of the Tower Recordings, and Erika "EE" Elder, CEO of Heroine Celestial Agriculture and The MV & EE Medicine Show. Together with their dog Zuma, they run the Child of Microtones library of exploratory music--sometimes their own lunar blues, sometimes finger-picking-style noise/space, sometimes lonesome frontier folk.  MV & EE have landed at the DiCristina Building bearing Drone Trailer, featuring The Golden Road: Doc Dunn (pedal steel, guitar, harmony), Mike Smith (bass, fender rhodes, harmony), and James Anderson (drums, engineer). You may recognize these names as part of MV & EE's touring band when they scorched across New England and the Rust Belt en route to Terrastock this past June. Drone Trailer is a consolidation of the previous musical high-life of the duo's space shanties for the 21st century. In other words, MV & EE explore their unique mix of lunar raga and astral string band music, with a couple deep-space burners/covert jams such as opening blast "Anyway" thrown in to bust it all open. Nobody is gonna mind if they hear a little Crazy Horse and prime-era Dead here as well!  The Golden Road will be living it all this autumn and winter, touring the US and overseas. Stop by and say howdy, and be sure to set up some mics.

Bunyan, Vashti

Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind

Dicristina Stair Builders

Following the amazing success story of Vashti Bunyan’s recent re-emergence as an artist after an exile of over 30 years, comes the release of ‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’, a comprehensive compilation of early recordings dating from the period prior to Vashti’s classic ‘Just another Diamond Day’ album which was originally released1970.  Titled after Vashti’s (Jagger/Richards-penned) debut single which opens the compilation, this double-album represents an attempt to both open out and draw a line under the past, and also to try to set the record straight about the disparity between how Vashti viewed (and still views) herself against the way she has been popularly perceived. Widely construed as a folk singer - a tag she fundamentally disagrees with - these recordings instead reveal Vashti as a pop singer, however ‘fragile’ and unique.  As Vashti explains in her liner notes to the album, “I have heard it said that Andrew Oldham took this fragile little folk-singer and tried to make her into a pop-singer against her will. No he didn’t. Too fragile for his world I might have been, but that was no fault of his… I wanted to bring simple acoustic music into mainstream pop”.  Before she dropped out and set off on that epic horse and cart journey up the length of the country, and before any of the ‘...Diamond Day’ songs that saw her tarred under the ‘folk’ title, these recordings reveal a young London girl writing a series of beautiful love songs that resonate profoundly via an...

Bunyan, Vashti

Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind b/w I Want To Be Alone

Dicristina Stair Builders

In advance of the forthcoming double-CD compilation of Vashti's early (pre-'Just Another Diamond Day') recordings from 1964 - 1967, DiCristina is issuing a  limited pressing of 1000 copies of this historic 7” single. Originally released way back in 1965 on the Decca label (as just 'Vashti', no Bunyan), 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind' was actually the young London-based singer's debut record.Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song was handed to Vashti by Rolling Stones manager / guru Andrew Loog Oldham, who had recently discovered her via an industry friend. Vashti was put in the studio to record the song with the backing of a full orchestra. The track was backed by her own beautiful song, 'I Want To Be Alone' on the B-side and released as a 7” single in May 1965.Despite a whirlwind of promotion around the release and some very positive reviews, the single flopped and Vashti subsequently left the Decca label to pursue more pared-down ambitions, recording a further single ('Train Song' / 'Love Song') for Columbia in 1966, before returning again to Andrew Oldham and the independent Immediate label he had just started. There she recorded three more singles ('Winter Is Blue' / 'Coldest Night Of The Year' / 'I'd Like To Walk Around In Your Mind') between 1966 - 1967, yet each of these remained infuriatingly unreleased, leading to Vashti's disenchantment with the music industry and disappearance for the Isle of Skye and a colourful if obscure...

Baim, Matteah

Death Of The Sun

Dicristina Stair Builders

Death of the Sun is the solo debut album from former Metallic Falcons singer/songwriter Matteah Baim. Produced by Baim herself, the album features musical contributions from Jana Hunter, Devendra Banhart, Butchy Fuego, Robert Lowe, Rob Doran, Jon Beasley, and Birdie Lawson. Baim recorded Death of the Sun June through August 2006 in part at home in Los Angeles as well as at Chicago’s CarterCo studio where James Carter engineered, all in analog. The album presents a world spaciously phrased and roughly edged, to bring you a type of New Age Grunge. Although its central theme is loss, a deeper sense of triumph lingers. The songs chronicle and depict the moon’s cycle of life and death, giving birth to romantic times. Baim purchased her first guitar from a basement pawn shop in Milwaukee and bought her first album, a Doors bootleg called Whysky Mystics and Men around the same time. She then attempted an occult study of music, piecing together the odd bits she came across, learning music notation from simple classical scores, playing along with the records she found and whoever could give a passing lesson or had time to play. Trading her beloved pawnshop guitar for an electric, she formed the band Metallic Falcons with Sierra Casday of CocoRosie. The Falcons created heavy, rich, ambigious songscapes for Desert Doughnuts, their only album. As the Falcons “fly into the night,” Baim’s Death of the Sun emerges.

Memory Band

Apron Strings

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The Memory Band began life at the turn of the century, the progeny of one-time Gorodisch electronicist Stephen Cracknell, his computer and a lot of imagination. In addition to releasing Gorodisch records on the Leaf label, Cracknell founded the legendary Trunk label (reissuers of The Wicker Man soundtrack) and spent a short stint playing bass with Badly Drawn Boy.  The group's second album, Apron Strings is a sublime blend of acoustic folk and homespun electronics. While many tracks were recorded live in the studio, others were created from loops recorded and manipulated by computer. Machines haven't completely paved over the hedgerows, however; alongside Cracknell, Apron Strings features the very non-machine-like talents of singer Nancy Wallace, violinist Jennymay Logan (of the highly respected Elysian Quartet), well-travelled violist Rob Spriggs and drummer / rocket scientist-in-residence Rhys Morgan. Adem, Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip) and Simon Lord (Simian, Garden) also turn in sparkling cameos.    The songs mix arrangements and bastardizations of traditional pieces -- a summery take on the trad "Blackwaterside" as beloved of Anne Briggs and Burt Jansch; a genuinely moving take on Irish folk gem "Green Grows The Laurel" -- with original compositions and unlikely cover versions (Carly Simon's "Why" and Ronnie Lane's "The Poacher"), to make an album both modern and timeless, completely unconstrained by most people's ideas of "folk music."   Apron Strings is released via the gentle might of Dicristina in North America and Peacefrog In Europe. 

Vetiver

To Find Me Gone

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*** Back in print on 2xLP! Note new price. To Find Me Gone is the second album by Andy Cabic’s ever-evolving band Vetiver, released two years after the debut self-titled release. Andy has since toured the world, usually as a member of Devendra Banhart’s band, and sometimes even with Vetiver. In those two years, Vetiver has expanded into a full-on singer-songwriter band/project, aided and abetted by some of the best players (and usually his best friends) in the extended family of which Cabic finds himself a member. Cabic explains, “This album sure has a lot of folks playing on it, same as on a Bobby Charles or Jerry Jeff Walker record, all good folks and friends.”  Once again skillfully crafted, produced and mixed with Thom Monahan (as on the debut), To Find Me Gone is a much different, more free and mature effort, reflective of Cabic’s growth as a songwriter over the last two crazy, wonderful years. According to Cabic, “I feel the new album embodies the swirling duality of these last two years, the duality of presence and absence, both in how protracted its birth has been, and in its lyrical themes. There are scenes in the songs where figures come back from far away, to changes and time itself rolling by in their absence. To Find Me Gone has songs of remembrance and recollection, all made in order to conquer absence. It’s a different kind of album, in that I think it’s the kind of album you...

Bunyan, Vashti

Lookaftering

Dicristina Stair Builders

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  It’s not often you come across an artist you can genuinely refer to as a “cult legend,” but Vashti Bunyan is truly that. A full thirty-five years after her only previous album, the singer returns with a new solo work, her first in all these years, and it is a breathtakingly beautiful album. Now based in Edinburgh, Bunyan’s story tells of the thwarted promise of early fame, disenchantment, long-term exile and eventual rediscovery. In the mid-’60s, after quitting art school to concentrate on music, she was discovered by The Rolling Stones’ guru, Andrew Loog Oldham, signed to Decca and recorded a single written by Jagger / Richards. Reviews touted her as “the new Marianne Faithfull” or the “female Bob Dylan” (though she claimed to be neither), yet further singles remained unreleased, leading to despair and a rejection of the music industry. After living under canvas in the bushes behind Ravensbourne College of Art, she bought a horse and cart and set off in 1968 with her boyfriend for the dream of a creative colony that singer Donovan was setting up on the Isle of Skye. It took nearly two long years to get there, by which time Donovan had left, but the experience formed the songs for Just Another Diamond Day, the album recorded by Joe Boyd in1969 that featured members of The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.  On the album’s muted release, rather than hang around London to promote the record, Bunyan...

Vetiver

Between

Dicristina Stair Builders

*** The new Vetiver mini-album was recorded whenever and where ever possible — including live shows, radio sessions and Andy Cabic’s own living room. Featuring Cabic originals including “Been So Long” and “Maureen” as well as a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Save Me a Place,” Between gives a subtle hint as to where the second full length is heading. Cabic is about to get to work on recording the next album, with Thom Monihan (Pernice Brothers) once again co-producing. Musicians appearing on the album (tentatively due out in late 2005) include the current Vetiver touring troupe, Alissa Anderson, Devendra Banhart, Kevin Barker (Currituck County) and Otto Hauser (Espers). Vetiver is headlining the Twisted Folk Tour in the UK to promote Between, and will also appear in Barcelona at the Primavera Festival.

Bunyan, Vashti

Just Another Diamond Day

Dicristina Stair Builders

Long overdue reissue and first-time available on CD as a domestic pressing, Vashti Bunyan's lone 1970 solo release features contributions from British folk royalty including members of Fairport Convention and preeminent producer Joe Boyd. Vashti was recently heard singing alongside Devendra Banhart on the title track of Rejoicing In The Hands. "Ejected from art school in 1964 for failing to choose between writing songs and painting, Vashti Bunyan was found by Andrew Loog Oldham singing her songs in London. She was given a Jaggers-Richards song to record as a single for Decca and a year later she released a single on Columbia. She went on to record further tracks for the Immediate Label, which remain unreleased. Vashti intended to leave the music business and the city behind for good when she started off for the outer limits of northern Britain in 1968 with a horse and a wagon, heading for the promised land. "The songs were written over two summers and one winter of travelling. After a chance meeting that winter with Derroll Adams (noted Woody Guthrie era folksinger and banjo player) who told her not to "hide her light under a bushel," Vashti took the songs of her journey to Joe Boyd. A year later he recorded Just Another Diamond Day, inviting Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band, and Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol (who also played on Nick Drake's records) from Fairport Convention to accompany Vashti on some tracks. "The album was released late in 1970 to little...

Vetiver

S/t

Dicristina Stair Builders

Vetiver grows in a “less is more” chaparral where simplicity offers ample room to wander. Strongly fertilized by traditional acoustic music, and more subtly cross-pollinated by the sparseness of “minimalism,” with its bare suggestions of melodies that the listener fills in for himself, Vetiver gracefully navigates folk and pop savannas with ease. Chief songwriter Andy Cabic grew up in northern Virginia and spent a few years in Greensboro, North Carolina, playing guitar and writing music as a member of the Raymond Brake, whose 1995 full-length, Piles of Dirty Winters (Simple Machines), melded experimental rock sensibilities with bright melodic touches of classic pop. After moving to San Francisco, Cabic enlisted violinist Jim Gaylord and cellist Alissa Anderson, along with Young God recording artist and troubadour du jour Devendra Banhart, who shares co-writing credits on “Los Pajaros del Rio” and “Amour Fou” and contributes guitar and vocals to the album. Anderson made the near-random acquaintance of My Bloody Valentine’s Colm O’Ciosoig, and he ended up playing drums on “Luna Sea” and “On a Nerve,” which brought along with it vocals on “Angels’ Share” courtesy of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval. “Amerilie” features the harp-playing of Joanna Newsom, Craig Koozer plays bass on “Amour Fou,” and Nick Holdzkom piano on “Luna Sea.” The album was recorded whenever and where ever possible — including various living rooms throughout the Bay Area — by Tom Monahan, who squeezed in production duties around Pernice Bros. tour obligations, sometimes working on mixes on his laptop and sending them...

Bozulich, Carla

I'm Gonna Stop Killing

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Carla Bozulich (leader of the defunct Geraldine Fibbers) extends the thread of her Red Headed Stranger as a thank-you to old fans and a welcome to new ones. This EP-priced full-length album contains two songs from Red Headed Stranger (one a duet with Willie Nelson), new explorations of music from that album, and seven unreleased live tunes, including original stuff from The Geraldine Fibbers and Scarnella, a Neil Young cover, a Marianne Faithful cover, and some world class improvisations. A distinct common bond, pathological honesty, and subversive musicality drive the music deeply home. These songs were all recorded during tours that surrounded the conception and aftermath of recording Bozulich's version of Red Headed Stranger - a classic '70s concept album by Willie Nelson - that Nelson himself ordained "hot stuff" and on three songs of which he played. The musicians on I'm Gonna Stop Killing are fascinating and well established in their own rights, and together create remarkable, collaborative music. Nels Cline, Devin Hoff, Carla Kihlstedt, Marka Hughes, Jenny Scheinman, Scott Amendola, Todd Sickafoose, Shahzad Ismaily, Ches Smith, and Dina Maccabee challenge Bozulich to go even further at every turn. Nelson's sparse, guitar-based renditions are stretched into eerie electronic soundscapes and haunting extrapolations of themes, bound by Bozulich's powerful voice. The desperate isolation of Nelson's original is always present and serves as a metaphor for the outsider status of Bozulich and others whose country music is truly alternative.

Bozulich, Carla

Red Headed Stranger

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Carla Bozulich has wanted to perform and record this classic Willie Nelson concept album for a long time. She never dreamed that Willie Nelson himself would be interested in playing on the album. Sure enough, a few weeks after he'd heard a tape on his tour bus, Carla was in his Austin studio recording duets with him. When frequent collaborator Nels Cline (who Jazz Times called "the world's most dangerous guitarist") formed the all-instrumental Nels Cline Singers with Scott Amendola on drums and Devin Hoff on upright bass, it turned out that they were all closet country fanatics. There was a convergence of sorts around The Red Headed Stranger, and Carla's heartfelt compulsion finally found its way to the material plane. Her idea of combining seemingly odd elements (jazz, improvisation, raga, caberet) with a traditionally country feel was brought to life by these highly inventive players. During a 24-date tour in April, 2002, Tzadik recording artist Jenny Scheinman joined the quartet on violin for a few shows and added soul and character to the recordings. Carla Bozulich is best known as the powerful singer The Geraldine Fibbers, initially a strictly country outfit, later on concerned with the universe's heaviest dark passions, and for her often instrumental, by turns organized and anarchistic work with Nels Cline as Scarnella. Before that she was the gamine howler in the groove/sex/assault outfit Ethyl Meatplow. After several years of experimenting with instrumental and/or improvised music, Carla is veering back into song-oriented territory. She has one...