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whumperstorm · 8 months

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Conceal, Don't Feel

@whumptober 2023, day #15 - Suppressed Suffering

Contents: self hatred, depression, angst, suicidal thoughts (implied), magic

The door shut behind him with a click and Luke was finally alone. Alone in his garage, separated from the rest of his housemates. Maybe this was why they really put him out here. They claimed it was because of his alchemy. Which was fair, the toxins need open air to escape, but now his little setup seemed so isolating. With no one around to see, Luke let the tears that had been brewing all day finally fall.

Wryan wouldn’t even look at him, slipping out of the room whenever he entered. Enn would, but only with glares and barely held back disdain. Luke hurt his sister after all. The one thing he promised not to do. He let both of them down.

Luke wandered over to his chemistry station, clearing a space for a fresh bottle. He truly felt awful- sadness bubbling up in his chest just like the potions he made. Maybe he’d make one now, to take the edge off of his overwhelming emotions. He certainly had enough stored up depression to make a lethargy potion.

At least he’d seen the two siblings in passing. Gene was ghosting him in a literal sense. He’d disappeared with a snap of his suspenders the moment the truth had come out and hasn't shown himself since. Luke had no idea if Gene was visible when he wasn’t around. The guy was using his powers to avoid him and that stung particularly harshly.

Luke filled a beaker with a potion base and sat down on the stool. In his head, he once again thanked The Madam for teaching him how to do this. He may be an annoying, emotional wreck, but he could still be useful.

He’d tried to confide in Pandora about all this, but not even the drama queen wanted to get involved in the mess he’d made, and had shrugged him off. It seemed everyone had already decided that he was the bad guy. He supposed that was fair.

He dipped his fingers into the beaker.

It was his fault, after all. He deserved this. He was so afraid to disappoint anyone, that he’d disappointed everyone.

The liquid began to bubble under Luke’s hand.

He was alone. Ghosted. No one wanted anything to do with him. Who would want a friend that couldn’t even love them correctly?

Luke let out a sob. From his fingertips, a deep blue color seeped into the base like dye mixing into water.

His friends don’t deserve the hurt he causes. He… he’d be better off gone. They’d be happier without him. No one needs a fuck-up like him around.

As the awful thoughts poured out of him, the potion took its form. He let himself cry and cry until the liquid turned completely blue, saturated almost to black. He retracted his hands and wiped them on a towel, then poured the beaker into a bottle, sealing the top with a cork. He felt… better. But not by much. He prepped another beaker and repeated the process.

He always limited himself to two potions per emotional wave. Usually by then they were manageable, and he’d move on with his day more relaxed and clear-headed. This time however, as he placed the new bottles on their shelf, he faltered. This all was caused by his stupid emotions. If he’d just get over himself and act like a normal person, maybe he’d be better. Maybe he’d be worth keeping around. He certainly wouldn't keep hurting his friends if he could keep his goddamn feelings in check.

Besides, he didn’t deserve to feel guilty, or wallow in his misery for what he did. He brought in on himself.

He prepped another bottle.

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By the end of the night, twenty new potions had been brewed and stored away. Most were the same dark, midnight blue, but some were red and green. A few yellows and pinks as well. All tucked away under his desk. Out of sight where they couldn’t do any more damage.

Luke didn't feel sad anymore. That was good. That was better for everyone.

In fact… He didn’t feel much of anything at all.

#whumptober 2023 #suppressed suffering #The Seven #Luke schneider #angst #emotional whump #suicidal thoughts #my writing #my posts #no. 15

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dustedmagazine · 1 year

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William Tyler & The Impossible Truth — Secret Stratosphere (Merge)

Secret Stratosphere by William Tyler & The Impossible Truth

It’s been a while since William Tyler released a full-length album of his own music, the most recent being Goes West, his 2019 foray into soft rock. A movie soundtrack, an ep , and a fantastic collaboration with Marisa Anderson have followed, all brimming with interesting ideas, and he’s presumably been in the studio cooking up something new. In the meantime, he has released a live recording from 2021. With Secret Stratosphere, Tyler returns to the classic rock sound of 2014’s Lost Colony ep — two of the three songs on which appear here — with a line-up that includes a conventional rhythm section and Luke Schneider on pedal steel.

There is a dad rock vibe to the proceedings (Tyler even name-checks Blue Oyster Cult and Rusted Root), from the accomplished soloing to the power chord crunch. Generally, the versions of Tyler’s compositions here don’t vary a whole lot from the studio versions apart from being fully electric and stripped down, though the lead-off track trades the AOR stylings of one of the better tunes on Goes West (the only one in the present set) for a proggy veneer. A stylistic pillar of post-rock, the slowdown before the big climax, is especially well-represented.

Secret Stratosphere doesn’t overlap with previous live sets Elvis Was a Capricorn (2012) or Live at Third Man Records (2016) but does draw on most of Tyler’s releases. It also includes one new tune (apart from a new ending grafted onto “Highway Anxiety” dubbed “Radioactivity”), “Area Code 601,” which Tyler introduces as a “Hawkwind Meets Charlie Daniels band number.” However, nothing quite so interesting develops; instead, heavy generic riffs create the impression that Dave Grohl may be waiting in the wings to launch into an anthemic chorus.

The recording has a definite live feel; Tyler talks up the crowd, which, though sounding a bit thin, responds enthusiastically, and the drums are way up front in the mix while the bass is more felt than heard. Schneider’s steel occasionally shines, as on the slowdowns before the big climaxes of “Whole New Dude” and “Gone Clear,” but more often it is in the background, filling the space often covered by keyboards.

Perhaps it is best to view Secret Stratosphere through the lens of the pandemic. Recorded in May 2021 (in Huntsville, Alabama), amid the first wave of vaccinations and the relaxing of many public health restrictions, the audience must have been thrilled to be back in a brew pub listening to live music, and Tyler sounds happy to be back in front of a crowd. In that context, the bar-band ethos makes perfect sense; this is music that would sound best after the third beer. I hope, though, that Tyler is preparing to offer up some fresh, forward-looking music soon.

Jim Marks

#william tyler #secret stratosphere #merge #jim marks #albumreview #dusted magazine #live #country rock #luke schneider

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covers-on-spotify · 25 days

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"All the Diamonds in the World"

Original by Bruce Cockburn

Covered by Kyle Hamlett Duo feat. Luke Schneider

#music #cover #cover song #Bruce Cockburn #Kyle Hamlett Duo #Kyle Hamlett #Luke Schneider #Spotify

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rastronomicals · 2 months

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8:03 AM EDT April 3, 2024:

Luke Schneider - "Exspirio" From the album Mojo 2020: Music For Homes (May 15, 2020)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Free CD that's not really ambient, though its title and art would suggest just such a thing, given away with the July 2020 issue of Mojo

File under: Coronavirus Music

#Luke Schneider #Mojo 2020: Music For Homes #Exspirio

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thebowerypresents · 7 months

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S.G. Goodman Is Thankful in Williamsburg

S.G. Goodman – Music Hall of Williamsburg – November 3, 2023

“I’m S.G. Goodman, thank you so much for being here!” I think she must have said that after every single song she played at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday night, a mix of dry wit and genuine appreciation. The show was a delightfully incongruous confluence of her off-key banter, delicate poetic lyricism, and cosmic vibrations of guitar and pedal steel. Things began with those guitars in an ambient swell, dramatically building to feedback that dissolved into the opening song, “The Way I Talk,” off Goodman’s debut album, Old Time Feeling.

As the set progressed, her drawling voice took center stage. The pairing of “If You Were Someone I Loved” and “You Were Someone I Loved” crackled with slide guitar until melting into Goodman howling into the room, the audience silent in admiration. The title track on last year’s Teeth Marks was another highlight, emotional lyrics meeting deft instrumentation. In between songs, she waxed philosophic at length on naming her tour after “Patron Saint of Dollar Stores” and other topics.

Her admiration for outlaw country shone through on the cover of Waylon Jennings’ “Waymore’s Blues,” which included a friendly “competition” with back-and-forth solos from pedal steel player Luke Schneider and guitarist Mark Sloan. After an appropriately solo take on “Solitaire,” Goodman closed the set with the love song “Space and Time,” a cushion of bass and drums and a glittering of guitars to finish things. The show felt complete, but no one in the room was complaining when they all returned for an encore, the rollicking “Work Until I Die,” Goodman in full West Kentucky growl until leaving her band onstage in an extended rock-out, her final “Thank you so much for being here.” —A. Stein | @Neddyo

Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @TobyTenenbaum

#Aaron Stein #Bowery Presents #Brooklyn #Live Music #Luke Schneider #Mark Sloan #Music #Music Hall of Williamsburg #Old Time Feeling #Photos #Review #S.G. Goodman #Teeth Marks #Toby Tenenbaum #Waylon Jennings #Williamsburg

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ykrecordsblog · 9 months

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sugar sk*-*lls - "Two-Chambered" maxisingle

Remixes by: MAKEUP AND VANITY SET COUPLER

"Undone" Cover: KYLE HAMLETT DUO (Kyle Hamlett + Luke Schneider)

Available exclusively on Bandcamp until Sept 8.

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Watch the "Two-Chambered" video

Pre-Order the STAR TIME album

#makeup and vanity set #mavs #coupler #kyle hamlett #luke schneider #kyle hamlett duo #sugar skulls #remixes #maxisingle #bandcamp friday

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mergerecords · 1 year

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Secret Stratosphere, the new album from William Tyler & the Impossible Truth, is out now! Listen on all the usual streaming platforms or grab an LP or CD today! found.ee/SecretStratosphere

Featuring the crackling combo of Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather), Brian Kotzur (Silver Jews, Country Westerns), and Luke Schneider (solo, Margo Price), the quartet stretch the dynamics of Tyler’s compositions to their fullest interdimensional potential.

#william tyler #jack lawrence #brian kotzur #luke schneider #the raconteurs #silver jews #country westerns #margo price

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zanephillips · 10 months

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Tom Wopat as Luke Duke and John Schneider as Bo Duke The Dukes of Hazzard (1979–1985) 4.08 "10 Million Dollar Sheriff Part 1"

#tom wopat #john schneider #the dukes of hazzard #the dukes of hazzard 1979 #luke duke #bo duke #tvedit #seriegifs #televisiongifs #classicfilmblr #retrotvblr #userbbelcher #useroptional #userstream #usermichi #usergina #gifs #mine #*

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milesbutterball · 2 years

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youtube

#luke schneider #awesome #music #peace #loveislove #lets take the high road #peace begins now #let peace in #✌️#we can do it #Youtube

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doomandgloomfromthetomb · 2 months

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William Tyler - Primavera Sound, Barcelona, Spain, June 2, 2017

I caught William Tyler and Luke Schneider in Denver a week or two ago, performing both solo and in glorious duo format. And, by some extremely fortuitous twist of fate, I'll be seeing both of these dudes again in Los Angeles in a couple day — if all goes according to plan!!

However! In LA, William and Luke will be playing with the full Impossible Truth band ... which is amazing news for me. Ever since the Whole New Dude EP from way back, I've wanted to catch William in complete rock gawd mode, but the chance has never presented itself. Until now! It is going to be radical — come out and join me?

To get in the right frame of mind, here's a great trio performance from a few years ago. A big festival gig with William, drummer Joe Westerlund and bassist Brad Cook sending endlessly positive vibrations out into the Barcelona night.

#william tyler #luke schneider

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knittinganddrinkingtea · 11 months

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Nik Stewart by Luke Schneider for Factice Magazine February 2017

#Nik Stewart #Luke Schneider #Factice Magazine #factice #fashion #mode #moda #model #models #women's fashion #womenswear #editorial #style #2017 #my upload

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sinceileftyoublog · 2 years

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Kyle Hamlett Duo Interview: Into the Grey

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Sometimes, all it takes is a few instruments, an old house, and two free days to make magic. Such was the case for Tape Diamonds (Arrowhawk), the new album from singer-songwriter Kyle Hamlett and pedal steel extraordinaire Luke Schneider.

Hamlett and Schneider played together for a long time in Lylas, a psychedelic band centered around Hamlett’s compositions that saw a rotating cast of members and last released an album in 2017. Since then, Hamlett started to release finger-picked folk songs under his own name, including his debut solo LP Nowhere Far. Schneider, meanwhile, started to make his name as a session player for the likes of Margo Price, Orville Peck, and Lilly Hiatt, all while becoming a key player in a burgeoning Nashville scene of ambient Americana and receiving loads of critical praise for his 2020 new age pedal steel album Altar of Harmony, released via Third Man Records. Over the winter, Hamlett took advantage of fortunate timing and brought a batch of songs, guitars, harmonica, melodica, percussion instruments, and a Tascam 388 tape recorder to a heat-less house off of Music Row, inviting Schneider to lay his woozy pedal steel and dobro over some compositions that followed the Nowhere Far writing sessions. The result was Tape Diamonds, an appropriately named record that finds breadth in the smallest of moments.

The songs on Tape Diamonds contain roughly the same ingredients: Hamlett’s acoustic guitar, self-described “impressionistic” lyrics, and laid-back, gentle singing, and Schneider’s glistening pedal steel. Yet, each of them give off distinct vibes. Opener “Expected Of” is quietly jubilant, with its jaunty picking and buzzing harmonica. “South”, on the contrary, dabbles in melancholy and nostalgia, similar to the type of Americana that Schneider practices on his solo records and with Nashville Ambient Ensemble. Engineer Jake Davis captures eons of emotion with simple effects, like the trailing echo on Hamlett’s voice on “ZZZ”, fleeting like a ghost of someone’s past. Some of the very song titles reflect the push-pull of Hamlett and Schneider’s paradoxically simultaneous qualities; “Almost Motion” and “Fast As Vaseline” could be tags on Bandcamp attached to Tape Diamonds. Best, the two players revisited existing tunes with the same plaintive, yet adventurous spirit with which they approached Hamlett’s new songs, adapting Lylas’ “Years & Years” and The Smiths’ “Death of a Disco Dancer” to contemporary ears.

Last month, I spoke with Hamlett over the phone from his house in Nashville about Tape Diamonds, working with Schneider again, winter, and his current relationship with The Smiths. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: What made now the right time to finally sit down with Luke and record Tape Diamonds?

Kyle Hamlett: It was a timing thing. Lylas for a long time had been a rotating cast but had settled into a pretty steady lineup around the mid Aughts. A couple of those guys got really busy with other projects, and we couldn’t work on as much Lylas stuff. I didn’t want to call anything I was doing that didn’t involve them “Lylas,” so I gave myself permission to do stuff under my own name, which I had been resisting for a long time, for whatever reason. In doing so, I got back in touch with Luke, who was having a pause in his busy schedule. We just dove in. I wrote those songs right after I had written some other songs that would end up being my first “solo album,” so it was this burst of writing that felt like a bit of liberation and [a realization that,] “I can do this by myself, or I can do this with Luke, and it will be just a two-piece.” [I] was reigning it in, a bit less structured.

SILY: How would you compare working with Luke in a full band versus working with him in just a duo?

KH: That’s a great question. In a larger band, there’s less sonic space to ask for. He does such beautiful, textural things so well, he stretches out more and leans into that. He’s a very sensitive listener, and no matter the setting, doesn’t put anything in that doesn’t need to be there. He’s not a guy that plays just to play. That sensibility remained. But by nature of the sparsity of the duo thing, he had more room to put his psychedelic textures in the forefront.

SILY: Yours and his guitar playing, by virtue of both your playing style and the quality of the instruments themselves, are distinct. The songs that start with you versus the songs that start with him end up with different feelings. How did you decide who would come in first on each song?

KH: Certain songs felt a bit more open. Most of them originated from songs I had written on the guitar and showed to him, so if there was one with a busier finger-picking pattern, it made more sense for me to start it or for us to start together. But if it was a slower, more spacious one, with a deliberate or dragging tempo, it was nice to have a bit of a color there [for Luke to provide] a sonic bed for things to sit in. The tempo and feel of the songs suggested that to us.

SILY: Was there something in general that inspired the lyrics?

KH: It depends on the song. A couple were definitely inspired by specific instances and experiences I’ve had. They’re all kind of impressionistic. I like dream-like lyrics and lyrics that leave room for the listener’s imagination. I don’t want to dictate too much what you’re supposed to be experiencing. A lot of them were born from what the music seemed to suggest. Even the ones based on some real-life experience tend to be abstracted.

SILY: Did the time of year you recorded Tape Diamonds have an effect on the final product? Do you find it a particularly wintry or pastoral record?

KH: I tend to shift. One winter, I’ll want rock and roll, and another winter, I’ll want something soft and acoustic. But we principally recorded it on a very cold day in this old house on Music Row, and Luke literally had a blanket on his pedal steel to keep it in tune. Everything was slipping and weird, and the [heat] was out. That’s definitely infused in my memory. [Tape Diamonds] doesn’t feel inseparable from that to me. I feel like I wrote some of the songs in a summer/fall kind of state. But it definitely works for winter and colder weather.

SILY: The great irony of Chicago winters is that even when it’s bitingly cold, it’s so blindingly sunny. I feel like the shimmery nature of the music will be a good soundtrack to a Chicago winter.

KH: “Shimmery” is a perfect word for Luke’s textures. Chicago winters: I’ve only been there a couple times, and they feel pretty brutal. I’m super impressed whenever I meet somebody who has lived there for a long time. It’s pretty hard not to be beaten down by the consistent cold.

SILY: There’s no such thing as bad weather--just bad coats!

KH: I like that.

SILY: Did you have a general approach to the sequencing of the record, or at least to groups of a couple tracks that sounded good back-to-back?

KH: We were thinking of the flow of everything, sonically more so than thematically or lyrically or with any kind of arc. It was just about what seemed like a good start, what seemed like a good way to follow that up, and what the next song needed. It was intuitive. I remember sending it to Luke, and he had one or two suggestions, but it was something we both agreed on pretty quickly. We can sometimes have very different opinions and know what we like or don’t like. I was surprised we agreed so quickly.

SILY: I really like “ZZZ”, which is a very fleeting song, even in terms of the trailing on your voice. To follow it with something as expansive as “Night Nurse” was very effective.

KH: Thanks. Some of them are a little more expansive and long, and we didn’t want too many of them in a row, or some of the shorter ones [in a row, for that matter.]

SILY: What’s your and Luke’s relationship with The Smiths, in the past and now, and how did you approach the cover?

KH: We both have historically liked The Smiths quite a bit. I remember in one of our first conversations, I was very much responding to Morrissey’s lyrics and poetry and vocal approach, and Luke was very into Johnny Marr’s radical and unconventional guitar arrangements and structures. We were geeking out. We bonded over them for a long time. A friend’s wife told me years ago she thought Lylas should cover “Death of a Disco Dancer”, and it never happened. For some reason, I thought it would be fun to do that now since we were playing together again--Luke was playing pretty regularly with Lylas at that point. It was fun to cover the Lylas song “Years & Years”, too. That was one of the first songs Luke played pedal steel on, so it was fun to have a reunion on that one. But back to The Smiths: I can’t fully speak for Luke with where he’s at with them now. Morrissey is obviously a problematic, opinionated, toxic guy in some ways. But the poetry and music in that song in particular still speak to a higher truth for me most of the time.

I heard somebody in an interview refer to Woody Allen as “the late Woody Allen.” I thought, “Are we going to have to start referring to Morrissey that way, too?”

SILY: Why did you release “Expected Of” as the first single?

KH: That was one of the last ones I wrote. I wrote that one and “New Orbit” after the initial reacquaintance of myself and Luke. I wrote it in a burst of inspiration by how easy and fun it was to play with Luke. Because it was the newer of them, it was more exciting to me than some of the songs I was thinking about for a while. There’s also an immediacy to it, which I like. It doesn’t have pedal steel, so in a way it’s a little unrepresentative of what you get from the rest of [Tape Diamonds], but I like that. It sets you up to be surprised. It’s not an encapsulation of everything. It [also] sounded great to me. [Engineer] Jake Davis got great guitar, voice, dobro, and percussion sounds.

SILY: “New Orbit” is one of a few song titles on here that get at the vibe of the record, the contradictory nature of the record being both expansive and immediate. The other are “Almost Motion” and “Fast as Vaseline”. They’re paradoxical and appropriate.

KH: I like paradoxes in words and phrases and sounds. It’s nice to think about the context of just the sound. We’re shooting for something a little more extensive and mysterious. One of my favorite things is to have a lyric almost immediately contradict itself. I’m thinking of The Beatles’ “Revolution”, when John Lennon sings, “You can count me out--in.” It goes along with especially what he’s saying, such a bold anthemic statement immediately undercut in a way that somehow gives it more gravity to me. That’s something I’ve always responded to. I very rarely trust absolutes. The grey areas are always more interesting. Contradictions are more thought-provoking to me.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the album title?

KH: Funny story. We recorded [Tape Diamonds] on Tascam 388. I actually had a little reel of tape I took to the first session, [thinking to myself,] “This album’s gonna live on a little piece of tape.” If we botched the take, we would record over that take. A couple times, if we did the song a little faster, when we got to the end, there would be a little residual bit from the previous take. Are you familiar with the musical term “diamonds,” where it’s just a big open hit, like, “Dunnnnnn”? [Because] there are a couple songs that end and then end again. The one that made it onto the record is “Rocky 13″. You hear it end and then a little flash from the previous take. We kind of just coined those “Tape Diamonds,” and I liked the phrasing of it. It’s also a contradiction, if you think of tape being very analog, sticky, visceral, and tactile, and diamonds being a more glamorous, regal, hard thing. It’s a neat, evocative phrase to me. It’s funny it was an in-joke that started during the sessions.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?

KH: That’s from a photo my wife took. She’s a visual artist, and when I have a project nearing completion, I start talking to her about it. She’s usually very familiar with the material and where it’s headed. I don’t think I had any ideas, really. She had taken the photograph and asked what I thought about it. I showed Luke, and he and I had talked about it a bit. He liked a lot of private press new age LPs and wanted a sensibility that felt a bit like that, so he thought this was perfect. Another thing we could have not landed on so easily, but something about that photo hit the right nerve for all of us.

SILY: What else is next for you?

KH: There’s nothing left over from this session, as far as I recall, but I’d love to do more with Luke. We haven’t begun that process yet, but I have a couple songs I’d like to do with him. I’d also like to open it up to more 50/50 collaboration if that’s cool with him. If he’s making his own ambient pedal steel music at the time, he might not have energy for it. But if he’s in the zone, it might be cool for us to build up the soundscapes together and have it less of me coming in with my song and adding his beautiful textures to it. It would be fun to have it happen a little more in the moment, in the room. We’ll see what actually shakes out.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately you’ve enjoyed?

KH: I’ve been catching up on Stranger Things. I’m a Kate Bush fan and am thrilled [“Running Up That Hill”] is in most peoples’ ears right now. Hopefully, that will make the human race more positive and understanding people, having that little bit of cosmic heaven in their ear. But I haven’t reached that season yet; I’m at the end of season 3. I’m reading Carl Jung’s autobiography right now, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which is incredibly fascinating. I’m listening to a lot of Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music, Robyn Hitchcock, and The Cleaners From Venus. Midnight Cleaners has been on heavy rotation; “Only a Shadow” is a timeless piece of music.

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dustedmagazine · 2 years

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Various Artists — Luke Schneider Presents Imaginational Anthem Vol. XI: Chrome Universal - A Survey of Modern Pedal Steel (Tompkins Square)

B.J. Cole

Luke Schneider Presents Imaginational Anthem vol. XI : Chrome Universal - A Survey of Modern Pedal Steel by Various Artists

The 11th volume of Thompson Square’s Imaginational Anthem series focuses on the pedal steel guitar. Usually associated with country music, the instrument has come into its own in recent years in more experimental circles thanks to its ability to produce sustained drones and shimmering textures. Chrome Universal develops over nine instrumentals a mood of transcendent calm far removed from the pioneering work of figures such as Country Music Hall of Famer Buddy Emmons. In the broader sweep of the Imaginational Anthem releases, this collection follows the trajectory traced by Chuck Johnson (who is not represented here despite having appeared on the seventh volume during his acoustic phase) from fingerpicking acoustic guitar to pedal steel.

The tracks are concise, most around three to four minutes, and the whole thing comes in at just over 40 minutes. BJ Cole’s “Ely Revisited” establishes the mood with drawn-out notes drifting over a wash of synths, an arrangement shared by curator Luke Schneider’s dreamy “Yosemite 17” and Jonny Lang’s “Lambient,” which also adds bird songs.

Of the somewhat more country-sounding tracks, Rocco DeLuca’s “Many Singing Softly” pairs the pedal steel with a fiddle, and Spencer Cullum’s “An Ode to Dungeness” spices things up with a little percussion as well as keyboards. Maggie Bjorklund’s “Flow” straddles the two worlds of Chrome Universal, beginning with a Nashville sound and then moving into more experimental territory with some distortion and rhythm that could be a tapping foot or drum machine.

A few of the tracks seem to present the pedal steel unaccompanied. Susan Alcorn, whose work has extended from blues and country to free jazz, contributes with “Gilmor Blue” perhaps the most challenging track here in terms of unexpected harmonies and somewhat less mellifluous sounds, though without disrupting the overall feel of the collection. Barry Walker’s “I Will Tread upon the Lion and the Cobra” and Will Van Horn’s “Magnolia City” build up thick, synth-like walls of reverb and sustain through which their notes drip.

Chrome Universal provides a useful entry-point for those curious about this curious instrument in contexts beyond the backing for twangy songs about heartache. It’s also a great chill-out record in its own right thanks to Schneider’s sequencing and focus in putting the collection together. One can quibble with the omissions (e.g., of Jonathan Gregg of Suss and Nathan Golub as well as Chuck Johnson), but not with the selections, which provide solid evidence that the pedal steel is more than a niche instrument.

Jim Marks

#Luke Schneider Presents Imaginational Anthem Vol. XI #Chrome Universal - A Survey of Modern Pedal Steel #tompkins square #jim marks #albumreview #dusted magazine #pedal steel #luke schneider #jonny lang #b.j. cole #rocco deluca #spencer cullum #maggie bjorkland #susan alcorn #barry walker jr.#will van horn

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