For over three years now Brad Rose’s Digitalis Recordings (and its limited run companion Foxglove) have been releasing (a lot of) music that is close to Rose’s heart in one way or another. Paging through the catalog of these labels trying to discern some kind of “greater plan” at work would prove confounding to even the most patient listener. The labels have evolved partly as a mirror of the eclectic taste of their founder which means one can follow threads all day and still not see any wearable garment. While this can prove tricky for genre bigots, open eared listeners can be pleasantly surprised by adjacencies while browsing.
“Gold Leaf Branches” walks the tricky line between providing an interesting sampling of an extremely diverse label’s offerings while providing enough solid content to be more than just a jumping off point. It gives Rose a chance to promote some of the artists he’s come to love and, in a good many cases, play music with. The vast majority of them have released discs on the Foxglove or Digitalis labels, but there are plenty of kindred souls who throw in their own ingredients to this stew. In fact, the discs have the feel of a potluck dinner where friends bring dishes which are delicious and distinctive. Like that imaginary dinner, no one is going to be able to swallow everything (and certainly not at one sitting), but the bounty speaks to the breadth of the community that is drawn to the table.
Given that some of the offerings may not always sit well together, the sequencing of a project like this is key. Fortunately, the way the compilation is laid out may be its greatest strength. Clearly a lot of thought and many hours of listening went into deciding what went where. There are whole sets of tracks that fit so well together they form their own mini-compilations. Other times only the overall mood of two consecutive pieces is similar and sometimes it’s downright impossible to figure out what the connection is at a logical level; you just have to let go of that need to know. It’s at these times that the sequencing can seem more like free association than any kind of sensible progression. But even free association has its own twisted logic and usually it’s not all that twisted once one understands what the desired effect is.
The only real way to get a feel for how this baby flows is to run down the songs one by one so that’s what comes next. But if what you’ve heard so far has intrigued you, go ahead and take the plunge. Odds are that if you like a few of the better known contributors already (each one of which by the way contributes some serious quality stuff), you’ll discover some new favorites along the way and end up with a great overview of the crazy mixed up world that is the Digitalian diaspora.
Disc one kicks off with a solo acoustic rendering of Six Organs of Admittance’s Dark Noontide closer “Thousand Birds.” Despite the liner notes’ “Paul Is Dead” hints at Ben Chasny’s passing, he’s clearly alive and very well and proves that “Birds” is just as good a way to begin a record as it is to end one. Next up come Kuupuu’s atmospheric jangles, squishes, and caterwaulings which are an ominous Halloween creepy crawl while Stuart Busby’s stately and minimalist “First Steps” is the perfect ordered antidote to Kuupuu’s incipient dementia. Hala Strana’s “Fanfare” continues the processional with a signature joyous reel. This piece is easily the match of anything on Steven Smith’s other Hala Strana releases, yet another example of a primo quality contribution to “Branches.”
Alligator Crystal Moth’s off-center “Epicenter Crystals” combines spastic tribal drums with slurred vocal snippets and tinkling plinks while Gray Field Recordings’s “Rune of the Moon and Endymion” trumps a delicately plucked mandolin air with whispered poetry dropped in behind backwards tape scrapings and mournful violin. Maniacs Dream “Wayke Up” ironically returns us to the land of fevered dreaming as the ghosts in the attic clatter and rattle their chains. Like a lot of Maniacs Dream, one feels as though there are probably ten different songs going on at once. The resultant effect is both disorienting and curious. Next up is the rolling swell of Courtis’ “Insolacion De Soles Aledanos.” It only lasts for slightly more than four minutes, but I could be swaddled and rocked in its arms for hours.
Guitar hero in-the-making James Blackshaw contributes some of his signature brilliantine twelve string picking and bowed drones to “No Ghosts.” The combination is not necessarily new (e.g. Jack Rose or Steffen Basho-Jungans), but Blackshaw’s fluency is impressive and his sundazed sound sets it apart from mere aping. Next, the incredibly prolific Robert Horton spins a complex web of sound in “Beauty of Decay” that abruptly resolves into a hovering drone. This is fitful, agitated music never content to remain at rest. Horton’s view of decay is that it is an active process.
Annelies Monsere’s “You were on my side (guitar)” is a minimal and gorgeously breathy miniature ode to a friend’s support. The simplicity and brevity of the composition emphasize Monsere’s lovely voice. Soarwhole’s “Kronosdilutze” could well be a smacked up outtake from Public Image Ltd.’s heyday during an unguarded moment when John Lydon had relaxed his sneering front (but only slightly). Keeping things off-kilter, Keijo Virtanen and his merry band of pranksters the Free Players engage in more haunted house rickety organ and drum stumble as they document what sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Timothy, Revelator offers up his take on “Friday Morning”, Sydney Carter’s spine-chilling front porch banjo ballad that voices frustration with an impassive God who allows his only son to be (quite literally) hung out to dry. As if to continue the feeling of mourning, Pefkin’s plaintive dirge “Blast Beach” floats in on bent accordion notes crying to the sky. The darkness continues with Visitations’ tentative backwoods lo-fi murder ballad which seems to have been recorded from a forgotten mike buried in a drum that occasionally thumps like a ghost in the attic.
Itdreamedtome’s brief “Duneuuic” opens hesitantly like a flower on a beach on some cold Northern shore, slowly building in strength like the warmth of the sunrise. Confounding the tendency to lighten things up, next comes Silvester Anfang’s cavernous and lugubrious dirge “Corporelijck Punieren.” However, it’s not merely pain and suffering as it manages to resonate with an uplifting clangor before returning to its belly crawl along the scorched earth. Elephant Micah’s “Ruination of the Runaways” might be the straightest singer-songwriter “folk” entry in the whole compilation; its only peculiarity might be the rough edges of a live recording’s saturated distortion crunching the bright acoustic strum and earnest vocals.
Oxblood Reincarnation’s “Milkstone” floats a distant mandolin finding its way inside a vapor chamber of slowly undulating shimmer and Kulkija’s “Hiljaa Hiivin Pois Aurinkoon” is a beautifully simple swaying lullabye. Finally, disc one comes to a close with Snake Oil’s “Untitled” consisting of tape loop hiss and shuffle, meandering guitar chords with some barely recognizable field recordings buried somewhere in the mix.
Disc two begins with Hertta Lussu Assa’s “Live at Potlatch.” This starts off with more herky jerky guitar and tambourine jingle. Like Soarwhole’ entry on disc one, this summons intriguing bloodlines between post-punk spasticity and “free folk” before slide whistles, kazoos and stumbling drums resolve into spectral vocal swirls. Now that’s some kind of journey. Next, Wolfmangler’s “I Dance Because She Likes It” crawls along the floor on a bass heavy rumble as the ectoplasm covered chrysalis of Nick Cave tries to burst through Smolken’s throat.
Charalambides’ “Voice Box” is one long arc of Tom Carter’s instantly recognizable guitar, organ swell and ethereal voices entwined in a tense embrace leaving me wondering how so much space can sound so claustrophobic before everything opens up again on the back of Carter’s soaring yet laconic lead work. My only complaint is that after nearly nine spellbinding minutes, Christina Carter’s vocal swoon gets rather short shrift on a hasty fadeout. Nonetheless, fans of the band will find this essential listening.
The North Sea “Guiwenneth Of The Green Wood” features the host’s own dish at the pot luck; Brad Rose’s sun-dappled and cheery guitar, hazily moaned vocals and bird calls in the background. As if to refute the theory that confident optimism is the way to salvation, Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood follow with a loose, spacey, though hardly shambolic jam that approximates a midnight stroll in a somnambulistic trance.
The Weird Weeds contribute “Soda Jerk” which is just getting started on its woozily precise guitar interplay before the Laudable Pus intrude with their far more raucous live take on what David Thomas would sound like as an advocate of anonymous promiscuity. The whole thing reminds me a bit of The Fall’s “Paint Work” except that the Laudable Pus would never be confused with a documentary on Red Dwarfs. That’ll teach the Weeds to leave their tape out on the table where anyone can just fiddle with it before sending it in. Leighton Craig & Eugene Carchesio’s “Here I Give Thanks No.1” balances crazy slashes of echoing guitar with foghorn blasts of saxophone in a divine free improvisation racket. So it is quite a shock when Rameses III’s “The Tidal Draw” touches down with gently lapping waves of airy guitar and accordion.
Snowfoxx’s “Love Style One” plays out like the soundtrack to the alien abduction of the Flaming Lips circa 1998. This missing link explains how the Lips earlier acid-kissed overdriven guitar anthems softened into the more orchestral sound we’ve all come to expect. Whether Snowfoxx was actually aboard the mothership taking notes or whether this is a brilliantly whacked out piece of historical revisionism hardly matters when it’s this much fun. The strange otherworldly fun continues with Phil Legard’s Xenis Emputae Travelling Band’s “Song from a Wasted Orchard.” Legard manages to make even a quiet glade seem as if it is an alien landscape. Picking up on Legard’s skewed pastoralism, The Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree contribute their beautiful harmonies to the wistful “Being Here Has Caused Me Sorrow.” This is one of my favorites on the compilation because The Magickal Folk are one of those bands that have a strong grasp on tradition without being held in its thrall as they re-imagine folk forms.
Claypipe uses the strangely warm acoustics of an abandoned bunker as a staging ground for Antony Milton’s mosquito like violin skittering and careening off the walls while Clayton Noone’s spare guitar totters drunkenly around in “The Slow Dust of 60 Years.” The tape hisses are as dust motes in the still air. Next we go from huge spaces to tiny ones as Rose messes with our sense of scale with Wax Ghost’s “Fall City.” This is the sound of elves loose in a music box as its gently pulsating spare drone mimics the little people’s discovery of a funhouse of sound.
The Golden Oaks’s “Grower’s Communion” sounds like Henry Flynt sitting in a back porch rocking chair sipping lemonade in the late afternoon at harvest time while the dusty breeze comes in hot off the wheat fields. Little vortices of chaff build and unravel as he sinks into his chair and lets the music take the edge off a day spent in the fields. If Grower’s Communion is about the harvest, M Jarvis and A Jarvis’ loping “Rice Leaves” is the feel of a warm autumn kitchen making loaves of bread. There is peace and ease here in addition to all the yummy smells. Even 6majik9 appear to be eschewing their usual crazed clatter in “Debris” to capture some quieter moments in their shamanic quest for enlightenment. But they can’t help themselves and a deep tom rumble rolls over the encampment threatening a soaking. Lampukello’s “Metsa Mansikka Mehu Lasi” is an intriguingly unassuming and minimal mix of backwards tape loops rushing wind and barely audible drums. The result sounds like it was set up beforehand and just let to run its merry course but of course that’s just the effect achieved. Hypnotic and gorgeous it is the perfect follower for “Debris.”
Plat Ypus’ whacked out take on “Jazz” is certainly never going to find its way into any fancy hotel cocktail bar and more is the pity if you ask me. Marissa Nadler’s disc two closer “Lily, Henry & the Willow Trees” is as fine as any track on her albums though her honey voice and echoic picking hardly break any new ground above what we’ve already heard from her.
Disc three starts off with the floating and endlessly repeated mantra of Drekka’s “Possibilities.” Taken from a live performance and consisting only of vocals and viola, the two musicians repeat the chorus of “the world is full of endless possibilities” through myriad variations in tune, pacing and phrasing making its form the proof of its content. Next comes the truly wonderful though not very well known Anvil Salute balancing an open circular guitar riff that picks up slide whistle, trumpet and violin in its infectious parade. This is one of those tracks that ought to make people stand up and notice these guys. Keith Wood’s Hush Arbors project should need no introduction but “Far Away I Have Been” is one of the deepest and most musically varied pieces I’ve heard from him. Starting off with minimally plucked guitar, Wood’s achingly fragile voice and woozy violin playing could raise goose bumps even on the hottest summer day. Then in the second half of the piece Wood plows his almost-breaking-apart wail under a growing storm of bass heavy hum topped with sheets of scouring guitar. What a breathtaking catharsis.
Following up that kind of emotional rollercoaster is not trivial, and the wide open improvisation of The Lost Domain’s “Death Dances” comes as a welcome relief. Slightly less manic than Maniacs Dream, these guys are no less weird and they are damn proud of that fact. As well they should be; I can almost see the skeleton’s popping out of their graves for a hoedown as the band creaks along. Lau Nau’s “Kuutarha” album made a lot of “best of” lists last year. On her contribution, the intimate ”Hidas Kuula”, the beautifully organic combination of accordion, triangle, bells, and Laura Naukkarinen’s gorgeously expressive voice is the equal of any track on that release. Next Keith Wood pops up again as the spare banjo backdrop in a new spooky folk classic from Wood and Wand (an impromptu session featuring Wood, and cohorts Wooden Wand Hassara and Aaron Rosenblum). Bleak in both its outlook and its spectral mood, “Death Dealer Blues” laments the eternal pull of that other, darker side.
If you were looking over your shoulder one last time before plunging into Wood and Wand’s underworld, you might see Friendly Keys calling you back with “Sea Lions” a soft spoken meditation on the power a good friend can have to compensate for those losses we all suffer in life. Once you’ve turned around to face life, Keijo’s bent and ruminative chamber piece “Moving Beyond” marries Indian slide guitar with hovering drones in a wonderfully balanced tone poem that makes the case for those endless possibilities that Drekka mentioned earlier. Juniper Meadows’ bright open ringing banjo and guitar chords recall a walk through the title’s “A Mess of Cedars.”
Unlike the sunshine in the Meadows’ cedars, Agitated Radio Pilot’s claustrophobic “Innumerable Night” lays itself down like an evening fog complete with haunting spectral voices on the wind calling from beyond the grave. If I had to pick one thing not to be listening to home alone, this would be it. Thankfully Terracid’s inspired use of a jaw harp to punctuate an otherwise stately processional dispels all the ghosts. Music, your mind does love you. Once the bleating goat guitar introduction of Dead Raven Choir’s “We Will Not Whisper” crests, what is revealed is a ballad that plays like a shriveled husk of a more grandiose past. This is sound imploding on itself albeit in an orderly fashion - like a well-detonated building.
The rarely heard from Master Qsh make a great percussive rumble in “Saunankatolla 2004” before bringing in a wooden flute to soften the edges. This piece works as a free improvisational interlude to break up the intensity that has been building before Nick Castro’s delicate live version of the ballad “Unborn Child.” The spritely recorder that weaves over Castro’s introduction is far more disciplined than Master Qsh’s noodlings, but there are resonances here as well. The disciplined commingle with the free often on these discs.
A far cry from his bubblegum pop destruction work in Sonic Temple Assassins, Jani H’s “Last Sunbeams in a Darkening Hall” is a brief undulating flow that calls to mind those final moments before day gives itself over to night’s embrace. The Does’ “Lullaby” invokes the eerie whisper of one who craves control (think Kim Gordon on “Shadow of a Doubt”) over a deceptively calm backdrop as the band explores the fine line between comfort and obsession. Mike Tamburo’s harmonica in “No More Dripping from Windsor’s Beard” stretches out to infinity as it chases itself through space trailing comet dust. Finally, Braspyreet leads a slow dignified march down pitch black back alleys searching for the ghost of Alfred Jarry. Mystical incantations abound in the demented parade that is “Kuu Putoaa.” The title itself is shrieked several times like an asylum mantra before complete glossolalia ensues. I would love to see these guys jam with Visitations as there are a lot of similarities in their approaches.
If you made it this far in this review, you can see that fifty nine tracks clocking in at nearly four hours can seem completely unmanageable and indeed the prospect of absorbing all of it is a bit daunting. The best plan seems to be to take these gems a little at a time, go back for a second listen when you hear something that strikes your fancy and skip what doesn’t match your mood. My advice is to give “Gold Leaf Branches” the time it merits and while you may never love everything here, you’ll at least come to recognize it for the wonder it is.
