#Gwenifer Raymond

[cowboy-tendencies]

Worn Out Blues - Gwenifer Raymond

#gwenifer raymond #uk #American primitive guitar #2020 #brighton #country blues #fingerstyle guitar

[anthologiealeatoire]

Écouter: Sometimes There's Blood de Gwenifer Raymond

#bandcamp #Gwenifer Raymond

[burlveneer-music]

SUSS & Andrew Tuttle - SUSS brings their ambient country sound to Longform Editions in this New York-Sydney collaboration

New York-based trio SUSS bridge atmospheric minimalism with classic Americana instrumentation, pioneering a genre they call ‘ambient country’ – a term that aptly defines their vivid and singular sound. SUSS have been described by UNCUT as if “Eno’s Apollo Atmospheres crash-landed in America’s Sonoran Desert”, and by Pitchfork as “neither rawboned nor ramshackle … [their] elegantly composed brand of ambient country stands as tall and clean as a brand-new pair of cowboy boots”. Composed of veteran musicians Pat Irwin (B-52s), Bob Holmes (Rubber Rodeo), and Jonathan Gregg (The Linemen), the group made the decision to carry on as a trio after the loss of founding member Gary Leib in 2020. Crafting their cinematic soundscapes with the resumes to back them up, SUSS weave pedal steel, harmonica, harmonium, mandolin, baritone guitar, and National guitar with synthesisers and loops, creating a massive and high lonesome sound. Andrew Tuttle is a best-kept secret of the Australian musical underground – a songwriter, composer and improviser who has collaborated with Matmos, Steve Gunn, Charlie Parr, Gwenifer Raymond, Luke Schneider and many others. Tuttle’s music exists serenely and purposefully in a space where the five-string banjo and the six-string acoustic guitar weave in and out of processed electronics. Like time-lapse photography, it unfolds its colours and textures with an astonishing gracefulness and wonderment.

#Bandcamp #suss #andrew tuttle #ambient #country #folk #new york #sydney #longform editions #2023

[jamesblackshaw]

Dear all,

Just wanted to say a big, big thank you to all of you who have preordered my forthcoming album and for the lovely messages of support. It's been incredible and I really can't wait to share what I'm working on with you all.

I'd like to announce a show with the wonderful Gwenifer Raymond, here in Hastings on July 18th at Stooge Coffee. It'll be Gwen's first here and only the third show I've played here despite living in Hastings for over 15 years!

I'd love to play more shows in the run up to the release of my new album, so if you're a promoter, a booking agent or would just like to set something up in your hometown, please contact me at: [email protected]

Similarly, please feel free to write to me at the above address in regards to work on any musical projects or simply just to say hi!

More soon and much love in the meantime,

James

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists—Ten Years Gone: A Tribute To Jack Rose (Obsolete)

Ten Years Gone: A Tribute to Jack Rose by Various Artists

If you listen closely to solo acoustic guitar music made in this century, whether you know it or not, you owe a debt to Jack Rose. When the 21st century first lurched into motion, he was best known as a member of the Appalachian-drone-noise combo Pelt. But when a felicitously timed job loss coincided with a resolution to develop his fingerstyle guitar chops, Rose emerged from the proverbial woodshed (actually his apartment in Philadelphia) to become an early evangelist for the blues-raga-etc. synthesis that John Fahey, Robbie Basho and a few others first proposed in the 1960s, which came to be known as American Primitive Guitar. Pondering the articulated ambivalence of another guitarist to be so categorized, Rose told fellow standard-bearer Glenn Jones that that was exactly how he wanted to be known. He blazed through a series of developmental stages in fairly short order, investigating mystic free-form, rigorously emulated American folk forms and intensely social rags, playing six- and twelve-string guitars, investing all he played with a distinctively personal heaviness of tone and rhythm, during intense, mostly solitary tours and on a series of splendid LPs before dying drastically young in 2009.

Buck Curran is a guitar player and scholar who, during Rose’s meteoric run, was a member of the Maine-based duo Arborea. Presently a solo performer based in Bergamo, Italy, he undertook the task of assembling a tribute album honoring Rose, something Curran had previously done in tribute of Robbie Basho. The project was originally released by Tompkins Square as a download in December 2019, on the tenth anniversary of Rose’s death. But after a couple years, Curran took it back and augmented it; his own label, Obsolete Recordings, issued a new edition with four additional tracks in June 2022. The participants include people who played with Rose, moved in the same circles that he did, or were moved by his example to ride the vehicle of solo guitar exploration down their own road. Not everyone plays guitar: fiddler Mike Gangloff, of Pelt and the Black Twig Pickers, and cellist Helena Espvall, of Espers, are fellow travelers who use the keen of bowed strings to give vent to the enduring grief over a friend and comrade lost. Micah Blue Smaldone, Nick Schillace and Sir Richard Bishop, all fellow guitarists who shared stages and hospitality opportunities with Rose back in the day, play tunes that express their personal strengths. 

A dozen tracks, including the four new ones, come from Curran and folks who to some degree picked up Rose’s baton. The consistency of the contributions is remarkably high. Newer American guitarists Joseph Allred and Prana Crafter cover the mystical end of the American Primitive spectrum, while Matt Sowell represents the rustic pole; Liam Grant, one of the late arrivals, spikes mystery with velocity. Other contributors show how far Rose’s signal has been broadcast. Simone Romei and Paolo Novellino represent Curran’s current country of residence, the former with some classic Takoma-style blues picking, the latter eschewing genre signifiers in favor of reverie. Argentine Mariano Rodriguez honors Rose with a stirring slide dirge. Welsh picker Gwenifer Raymond is every bit as energetic as Rose could be. Spaniards Isasa and Xisco Rojo both wax reflective, in their personal styles. Czech guitarist Jakub Simansky’s agile bluesiness is probably closer to Curran’s style than Rose’s, but that’s an observation, not a criticism. There’s just one caveat; Jack would have wanted to know where the vinyl was. Reportedly there’s an LP master ready to go, awaiting licensure, but until this compilation is available in a format that can tip a scale and be seen without voltage, the work is not done.

Bill Meyer

#dusted magazine #album review #bill meyer #jack rose #buck curran #obsolete recordings #american primitive guitar #pelt

[mousevsbug]

Gwenifer Raymond - You Never Were Much Of A Dancer

I was surprised to read that these are all original compositions! The pure technical skill on display here is remarkable, so it took me a moment to get used to such polished and perfect recordings. But does polished and perfect speak over soul? Sometimes, but, I decided, not here. Only almost. What it mostly speaks for here is a clear professional appreciation and dedication to what it is that's being honoured, learned from, and kept alive, without being turned into something it's not.

Favourites: Idumea, Off to See the Hangman, Pt. II, Bleeding Finger Blues

#2024 #i ran errands to this album #this is my 1st album by this artist

[cavenewstimes]

Solo Guitar Composition | The Acoustic Guitar Podcast

Click on this link to read a records of this episode. In this roundtable conversation, Diego Figueiredo, Gwenifer Raymond, and Yasmin Williams share their special point of views on making up for solo guitar. Through discussion and motivating presentations, our visitors check out the distinctions in between improvising and fine-tuning a piece, methods for making one guitar seem like a complete…

View On WordPress

[angeloslhphoto]

Cryptid vibes at Gwen's Gig @ St John on Bethnal Green ( 11/03 )

OM-D E-M1 II ( 12-200 ) This was very fun - The church was appropriately lit but the music vibes all night were spooky and it made me want to hunt cryptids. ISO 8000/ 1/10 /f22 / -5 stops to get things nice and grainy for most of these, but was jumping around the exposure triangle to get some of those smeary double exposure-ish shots with a longer shutter speed. Felt like I understood my camera more trying to impose a 'low light' vibe onto a scene than I ever understand it when I'm trying to take a picture of something in actual low light.

#live music #church #Spooky #Spotify

[darkarfs]

Oak Pantheon - The Absence Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - UTP_ Liturgy - H.A.Q.Q.

Devin Townsend Project - Ki Dayglo Abortions - Hate Speech The Black Dahlia Murder - Nightbringers

The Black Twig Pickers - Rough Carpenters Gwenifer Raymond - You Never Were Much of a Dancer Hum - Downward Is Heavenward

#this week's new listens

[ddcassiere]

CAGE MATES

Bile Bear second album Cage Mates is out!

From Dec 19th 2022 on BANDCAMP

From Jan 27th 2023 on  SPOTIFY and all other digital platforms

1 Calabria, Symphonic Poem

2 What a Wonderful Trockji

3 Lao - Lin Waltz

4 I Want to Kill Gwenifer Raymond

5 Gipsy Caravan

6 Calabrisella Mia (Traditional)

7 Stromboli (she said you are a bit like)

8 Astral Dances

9 Merry Xmas Zampanò

10 Hello Lomax

[musicblogwales]

Q&A: Gwenifer Raymond Pre-Tour Interview 

Music Blog Wales are really honoured to have spoken exclusively with Welsh virtuoso guitar player Gwenifer Raymond before she embark’s out on her brand new UK tour, huge thanks to Gwenifer for agreeing to chat with us and all the best with the upcoming tour dates.

Raymond began playing guitar at the age of eight shortly after having been first exposed to punk and grunge. After years of playing around the Welsh valleys in various punk outfits she began listening more to pre-war blues musicians as well as Appalachian folk players, eventually leading into the guitar players of the American Primitive genre.  

She released her sophomore LP ‘Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain’ at the end of 2020 to rapturous response. Her debut ‘You Never Were Much Of A Dancer’ emerged  on Tompkins Square to the same response in 2018. She has found herself equally embraced by fans of old-west and equally, by left field/experimental audiences. Appearances throughout the UK and the EU as well as the US marks her out as one to watch.  

Q: What part of Wales do you hail from and how has it geographically had an effect on your music?

Gwenifer: I'm originally from a village called Taff’s Well, so just north of Cardiff and at the tip of the Rhondda at the foot of the Garth mountain. I do think landscape can shape music quite a lot, and especially instrumental music. I think my own compositions have something of a folk horror element to them,which seems to me to reflect the overgrown, dark and witchy woods that I recall exploring quite a bit when I was growing up. I think perhaps that lends it somewhat more of the enclosed and gothic mood, as opposed to a more open and pastoral scene that you often hear in guitar songs.

Q: Your going on a UK tour this week, are you ready?

Gwenifer: Yeah I think so. It's been a while since playing a lot of shows on the trot, but I'm excited to be getting back to it. I find when I play the same set over a string of nights the music tends to find itself and evolve a little, so it's often where songs really find their feet. Given that I've not really toured this album properly, and a number of those tracks had never been gigged prior to recording it, it'll be really interesting to hear what happens to them. Q: How will you select songs for your live set?

Gwenifer: I usually choose my sets pretty selfishly along the lines of what I want to play. Invariably it'll be mostly the newest stuff with a few older tracks thrown in. Of course I try to pick tracks that will give the set as a whole a natural and engaging pace and dynamic. The big caveat to all of  this of course is tuning: I play in a number of different guitar tunings, and nothing stops a set in its tracks more than spending five minutes tuning your guitar - of course this is unavoidable, but I do try to group tunes together in order to minimise it. Q: Your latest Album is 'Strange Lights......' where and how was it recorded?

Gwenifer: This was recorded in isolation in my basement flat in central Brighton. I was booked in to record in a studio, but of course COVID put a stop to that- so instead I dropped the money I would have spent on the studio on some new mic’s and recorded it myself. I actually did it over a week's worth of evenings (whilst working my day job remotely from home during the day),recording a song or two per night. I spent the following week mixing, so it all came together pretty quickly in the end. Q: Do you have any tips and tricks for the avid home recording artist?

Gwenifer: Learn your neighbours' laundry schedule so you can avoid the rumbling of their washing machine. Beyond that, yeah just find the quietest and most comfortable spot you can in your home, invest in as decent a microphone as you can reasonably afford and just spend time playing with it; placement etc. Also, obviously most people don't have a fully audio-treated room to record in, but you can do a lot by hanging duvets etc. around you in order to absorb reflections. It's just practice really, training your ears to recognise what sounds good,what doesn't and what minor adjustments can be made to turn one into the other.

Q: In your own words how would you describe the music you produce?

Gwenifer: I guess it's just solo compositional guitar, with a gothic folk edge and twinges of early American blues, heavily informed by the alternating thumb technique predominantly used by early folk and Delta blues guitarist players. Q: Do you have any new music in the pipeline?

Gwenifer: I always do, but I'm a very slow writer. I live with a piece a long time before I consider it 'done'. Right now that's as true as ever and I'm working on some stuff which I may even start slipping into sets on upcoming tours. Q: What is your biggest inspiration for writing and staying creatively focused?

Gwenifer: It's listening to other music I suppose - any other sort of music really.To be honest I don't listen to a lot of solo guitar these days so I tend to be inspired by music completely unlike my own. I'm not sure if I'm creatively 'focused' exactly. Perhaps more creatively unfocused but ever so often a song falls out. I don't think there's a solid or consistent methodology that can be relied on for this sort of thing, it's whatever the little devil on your shoulder convinces you to do.

Just about anybody with an interest in the new school of American primitive will tell you that Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond is one of its most promising proponents. “I’ve been blown away by Gwenifer Raymond,” says Jeff Conklin. 

Josh Rosenthal agrees: “She’s just a fascinating person—a great example of somebody taking the raw elements [of the style] and making them more personal.” - BandCamp Daily  

"Its intricate folk melody is Welsh and Celtic in style but American Old West in practice. The rhythmic patterns mimic the swift dynamics of a fiddle with a country twang. Western music was originally influenced by traditional folk music from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; Raymond’s seamless crossover grows from these historically intersecting roots." - Stereogum   

UK TOUR DATES 

August 27 - Ara Deg Festival – Bangor 

September 03 – Larmer Tree Festival – Dorset 

September 04 – Maverick Festival – Suffolk 

September 07 – Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival – Belfast 

September 11 – Down At The Abbey Festival – Reading 

September 18 – The Castle Hotel – Manchester 

September 19 – The Continental – Preston 

September 20 – The Musician – Leicester 

September 21 – The Crescent – York 

September 22 – Brudenell Social Club – Leeds 

September 23 – The Old Cinema Launderette – Durham 

September 24 – Café #9 – Sheffield 

October 29 – Toy Museum – Brighton 

November 12 – King’s Place London Jazz Festival 

November 13 – The Wight Bear – Bournemouth 

November 14 – MAST – Southampton   

Watch: Sometimes There's Blood 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfLJvXNeY-M 

Bleeding Finger Blues 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pAm0uqkXAI  

Full web & label links Weblinks*  

https://www.facebook.com/gweniferraymondmusic/

https://gweniferraymond.com/

#Gwenifer Raymond #Interview #Pomona #strange lights over Garth Mountain

[aquariumdrunkard]

Gwenifer Raymond :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Gwenifer Raymond is a virtuoso guitar player, born in Wales but extraordinarily adept in the American Primitive tradition, which she learned from Stefan Grossman tab books, John Hurt records and a guitar teacher who introduced her to John Fahey.  Her latest album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, is steeped in folk and blues, but imbued with a bit of Welsh folkloric strangeness, which she distinguishes from other UK traditions for its violence and its dark humor.  

#gwenifer raymond

[hellwatermelon]

Best of 2020 pt 4/12

Feather and Bone - Sulfuric Disintegration Folterkammer - Die Lederpredigt Four Stroke Baron - Monoqueen Four Tet - Sixteen Oceans Frail Hands - Parted-Departed-Apart Fuck The Facts - Pleine Noirceur Gaika - Seguridad Glaciation - Ultime Éclat Gwenifer Raymond - Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain Hate Forest - Hour Of The Centaur

#Feather and Bone #folterkammer #Four Stroke Baron #Four Tet #Frail Hands #Fuck The Facts #Gaika #Glaciation #Gwenifer Raymond #Hate Forest

[harshr]

20 records I enjoyed very much in 2020

EDDINGTON AGAIN - Damani6 Soul/pop; the hook from the chorus in "!ndica" was stuck in my head for weeks. AUSTRA - Hirudin Synth/pop; I actually didn't like this record very much when I first heard it, but it grew on me immensely. I've been a fan of Austra forever and it's great to hear her expand her sonic palette. TYLER CHILDERS - Long Violent History Appalachin country/folk/bluegrass; I remain steadfastly ignorant of Tyler's standard pop/country material, but this EP of (mostly) instrumental fiddle music is fantastic, even without the social commentary context that elevates it even further. CINDER WELL - No Summer Irish/PNW dark folk; eternally grateful I got a chance to see this material performed live last fall. CRYSTAL GEOMETRY - Senestre Hard techno/industrial; I rarely expect a full-length album in this genre to be so good, but CG delivers. DEAD LORD - Surrender Straight-up Thin Lizzy worship; it doesn't make sense, but this band is way better than they have any right to be. MAENAD VEYL - Reassessment Dark techno/industrial; emotionally complex and satisfying in a way that most techno is not. MAJESTOLUXE - Secondary Sanctions Synth/industrial; heavy, dark, and brooding in the best possible way. MORWAN - Zola-Zemlya Slavic post-punk; this is what I always hoped Molchat Doma would sound like. HATARI - Neyslutrans Icelandic industrial; honestly, the full album is kind of a mess overall, but the good songs are GREAT. HOUSE OF HARM - Vicious Pastimes New romantic/synth; total goth comfort food with hooks for days. GWENIFER RAYMOND - Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain Welsh goth does American Primitive solo guitar ala John Fahey. Her first album was superb, but she shows far more range on this one, working solely with her own original material. SANGRE DE MUERDAGO - Xuntas Galician folk; a new Sangre de Muerdago album is pretty much guaranteed to make my year-end list. SAULT - Rise / Black Is Soul/pop/everything; the two definitive albums of 2020. SEVDALIZA - Shabrang Pop/experimental; this record goes places. Also, some of the more inventive use of autotune I've heard in a long while. SIXTH JUNE - Trust Synth/goth/pop; my spouse asks "Is this Enya?" every time I put this on and I consider that to be extremely high praise. STATUES - Holocene Norrland indierock. There were a few other quality indie/noiserock releases this year (Bully, Spunsugar, Radula), but my friends Statues earn top status. UNCONSCIOUS - Regnum Novum Techno/EBM/industrial; much like the Maenad Veyl record, there's an emotional depth here that I find absent in other similar works. VEDAN KOLOD - Wild Games Russian folk; the cover art got my attention and then the actual music blew me away. Vedan Kolod's brooding dark folk is precisely my thing. ZALIVA-D - Immorality Mutant techno from Beijing; there is nothing else in the world that sounds like Zaliva-D and I love it.

#eddington again #austra #tyler childers #cinder well #crystal geometry #dead lord #maenad veyl #majestoluxe #morwan #hatari #house of harm #gwenifer raymond #sangre de muerdago #sault #sevdaliza #sixth june #statues #unconscious #vedan kolod #zaliva-d #best of 2020 #techno #industrial #post-punk #ebm #soul #r&b #pop #dark electronics

[jazznoisehere]

Gwenifer Raymond: Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (Tompkins Square, 2020)

Design: Darryl Norsen Photography:  Casey Raymond, Jinnwoo

#gwenifer raymond #strange lights over garth mountain #darryl norsen #casey raymond #jinnwoo #album covers #graphic design #photography #folk

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Josh Kimbrough

Josh Kimbrough is a fingerstyle guitarist and composer from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and, for the last 15 years, a core member of the Trekky Records Collective. His latest album, Slither, Soar & Disappear, is an intimate and immersive song cycle inspired by the natural world, fatherhood, and the joy of solitude. In an August 2020 Dust, Jennifer Kelly observed, “His finger-picked rambles unfold like the slip-sliding time in a baby’s first year, a tumble of frantic activity interspersed with quiet, contemplative intervals.”

These are “ten of my favorite tunes released during the pandemic.”

Sally Anne Morgan – “Thread Song”

This song feels like a beam of light – natural and timeless. I love the lyrics – they’re whimsical and profound at the same time. The musical chemistry and comfort level between Morgan and her band is a joy to hear.

Gwenifer Raymond – “Eulogy for a Dead French Composer”

This first single from Raymond’s upcoming record is brutally gorgeous. It’s everything I liked about her first record, but more dynamic and intricate. I can’t wait for this record to drop. Available for preorder on Tompkins Square’s website or Bandcamp page.

Andrew Tuttle – “Scribbly Gums Trail”

Alexandra by Andrew Tuttle

This tune from Tuttle’s fantastic record, Alexandria, features his tasty banjo playing. Melodies start and stop, leaving you wanting more. The unusual blend of instruments and the off-the-cuff feel puts my mind in a dreamy state. Gwenifer Raymond plays fiddle.

Rachel Kiel – “Late Night Drive”

The sound palette here is euphoric: a driving beat à la The War on Drugs and guitar moves reminiscent of Guided by Voices. At the heart of it all is a great, catchy song. Rachel’s brilliant new record is out now.

Al Riggs & Lauren Francis – “Apex Twin”

Bile and Bone by al Riggs & Lauren Francis

It’s a treat to hear Riggs’ gentle vibrato shine in such a sparse setting. I’ve been playing this record on my commute to work lately – it’s a perfect fall listen.

Skylar Gudasz and Libby Rodenbough – “Wild Mountain Thyme”

A gorgeous and transcendent collaboration--greater than the sum of its parts. I hope to hear these two sing together on a track again soon. Out on Carrboro, NC’s Sleepy Cat Records.

Joe Norkus featuring Bobby Britt – “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness”

Acoustic Versions by Joe Norkus

Norkus has long been one of my favorite songwriters. His Bandcamp page is a treasure trove of top-quality bedroom pop gems. This tender John Prine tribute featuring Bobby Britt on fiddle is a must listen.

Silver Scrolls – “Walk One (II - Q Scrolls)”

Music for Walks by Silver Scrolls

All it takes is 20 seconds to be sold on this head-nodding jam from Polvo’s Quast and Brylawski. The great Polvo trademarks are present: beguiling vocals, modal guitar shredding. But there’s a great laid back, jammy feel as well. Out on Three Lobed.

Sylvan Esso – “Train”

I broke into a big smile the first time I heard this track. The way the boops and blips of the beat dance around Meath’s vocal is irresistible. I like how the playful production matches the tone of the lyrics. This whole record rules.

Laraaji – “This Too Shall Pass”

Sun Piano by Laraaji

This improvised tune starts out with a stilted bass figure and then blooms into something lush and moody. There’s a key moment where you can hear Laraaji trying to break out of a repeating pattern. Eventually he finds the transitional chords that lead to a wonderful climax.

#dusted magazine #listed #josh kimbrough #sally anne morgan #gwenifer raymond #andrew tuttle #rachel kiel #al riggs #lauren francis #skylar gudasz #libby rodenbough #joe norkus #bobby britt #silver scrolls #sylvan esso #laraaji