#gunn-truscinski duo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dustedmagazine · 3 years

Text

Jennifer Kelly 2020: I’m done expecting next year to be better

Not to belabor the point, which has been covered everywhere, but 2020 sucked. My last live concert was on March 7th. It was 75 Dollar Bill in a beautiful reconfigured industrial space on the Amherst College campus, and I already had questions about whether I should be there or not. The show was worth it, absolutely riveting, and no one I know got sick from it, but a couple of weeks later, Amherst College shut down and then, basically, the world.

When I think about 2020, I think about bands that don’t fully make sense unless you see them live, and how, this year, no one got to see them live. I think about musicians who were barely making it before, now cut off from concert revenues and, in a lot of cases, day jobs at restaurants, coffee shops and bars. I think about six-digit medical bills from multi-week COVID-19 treatments, and how my insurance will only cut that to low five figures. I think about the constant spew of bile and nonsense, the willful destruction of American institutions and the persistent sense that we will never recover from any of this, and I look for refuge.

Most of the time in music. Because the music kept coming even when everything else shut down. Even the artists who were holding back for better conditions ended up releasing EVERY ALBUM ON EARTH starting about September 18th. There was always music, good music, interesting music, beautiful music, and while that doesn’t compensate for a terrible year, it was something.

Here are 10 albums I loved best from 2020, with links to reviews or other articles I’ve written about them.

1. Gunn-Truscinski — Soundkeeper (Three Lobed)

Soundkeeper by Gunn-Truscinski Duo

A gorgeous exploration of mood and tone, this double CD set includes two extended live cuts and ten more recorded just down the road in Easthampton, Massachusetts. (And I thought nothing ever happened up here.) “Pyramid Merchandise” punches the hardest, John Truscinski balancing rock solid beat keeping with abstracted sculptures of percussive experiment, while Gunn finds the sweetness and the growl in his blues-touched guitar sound. But “Ocean City” is pure lovely respite, with big rounded notes dropping slowly and with grace through wavering transparencies of sustained tone. Long, searching, “Soundkeeper” will rekindle your longing for live improvised music, while the closer “For Eddie Hazel” vibrates with supercharged intensity, the notes and the steady rhythm too bright and beautiful to look at straight on.

2. Six Organs of Admittance — Companion Rises (Drag City)

Companion Rises by Six Organs of Admittance

Chasny imbues the down-home with wonder and the inexplicable with natural grace in this album inspired by stargazing. The album’s name references the way Sirius appears close to Orion, and the rollicking “The Scout Is Here,” commemorates the appearance of the Oumuamua asteroid, but this is no squiggle-y space opera. The music is mainly made of clean, all-natural picking, blues bends, and rambling jangle, though ruptured, periodically, by rushing, whooshing, amplified electronic sounds. Warm, simple clarity is tipped with awe in finger-picked “Black Tea,” while mists and mysteries predominate in evanescent “Worn Down to the Light,” but the joy comes in the balance between the ordinary and the unknowable shimmering like stars in a black sky.

3. Gil Scott-Heron and Makaya McCraven — We’re New Again (XL Recordings)

youtube

When the estate of Gil Scott-Heron asked Chicago composer, percussionist and hip hop chopper Makaya McCraven to reimagine the artist’s last, most personal album, McCraven jumped at the chance to tackle its themes of black struggle, black family and perseverance. McCraven surrounded Scott-Heron’s words with shimmering, post-jazz arrangements that incorporated some of his father’s recordings (his dad is jazz drummer Stephen McCraven) in an ongoing tribute to the blood relatives who shape and equip young black men for a challenging world. The music is wonderful, very different from the original, spare, blues-based arrangements, but they open out the master’s words in an illuminating way. I like, especially, the hustling, shuffling movement of “New York Is Killing Me,” which summons the city’s energy as clearly as the feel of heat rising out of a subway grate in August.

4. Obnox — Savage Raygun (Ever/Never)

Savage Raygun by Obnox

Obnox’s psychedelic mayhem roars like a California wildfire, setting a torch to rock, soul, hip hop, jazz and punk with fuzz-crusted abandon. Icons like Hawkwind flare out and curl into white-hot ash, while even Neil Young’s lick from “Southern Man,” is consumed in the all-encompassing heat of Lamont Thomas’ onslaught (“Young Neezy”). A double album, Savage Raygun covers a lot of ground, but in such a kinetic rush that it seems like one entity that stretched from end to end.

5. Anjimile — Giver Taker (Father/Daughter)

Giver Taker by Anjimile

Anjimile sounds beautifully comfortable with their new vocal range in this second full-length, which follows a gender transition. Pitched low and warm, their voice effortlessly navigates subtle melodies, integrating complex, African-leaning rhythms into songs about love, identify, family friction and the possibility of redemption through embracing one’s authentic self.

6. Osees — Protean Threat (Castleface)

Protean Threat by Oh Sees

John Dwyer has fronted bands called The O.Cs., The Ohsees, Thee Ohsees and now just Osees, evolving from a one-man bedroom pop outfit to a gleefully slopping garage pop project to a droning, krautrocking motoric monster along the way. This newest iteration takes a little of this, a little of that, from the repertoire, putting Dwyer’s best Bo Diddley-esque stomper in years (“If I Had My Way”) next to a wiggy psychedelic freak bomb called “Toadstool” which is adjacent to the dub-scented, narcotic head trip called “Gong of Catastrophe.” The mix works because Dwyer and his band commit to all of it, sequentially and within tracks. It’s the best Osees in years, all the good things in one package.

7. Sam Amidon — S-T (Nonesuch)

youtube

As always, Amidon starts with traditional, mostly folk and blues material and, as always, he transforms it into something more adventurous, spiritual and faintly otherworldly. With Shahzad Ismaily and Antibalas’ Chris Vatalaro to back him up, he breaks down the unyielding contours of pre-modern banjo tunes and porch blues, finding steady drones and complex afro-beat syncopations in their steady melodies. You can hear “Cuckoo Bird” a million times in a million different voices and never hear it as luminous and open-ended as here.

8. James Elkington — Ever Roving Eye (Paradise of Bachelors)

youtube

James Elkington is always pressed for time, maybe because he works regularly for so many other people’s bands (Richard Thompson, Jeff Tweedy, Spencer Tweedy) and collaborates with others (Steve Gunn). And yet his second solo album brims with balm and solace; he finds time in the interstices between warm, jazz-scented, Pentangle-esque verses and intricate flurries of picked and strummed and electric guitar. Even “Nowhere Time,” which exhorts “It is time for you to move,” has an ease and calm to it, while “Moon Tempering” is as still and lovely as winter starlight. Ever-Roving Eye is an album that assures us we’ll get it all done somehow, but just stop for a minute and listen.

9. Jehnny Beth — To Love Is To Live (Arts & Crafts)

youtube

This riveting solo debut from the Savages frontperson is both quieter and more intense than her full-band compositions, juxtaposing incendiary spoken word with the hedonistic thump of the dance floor. Guests are varied—Joe Talbot of IDLES at one pole, the actor Cillian Murphy at the other—but the music never drifts from Jehnny Beth’s singular viewpoint. Compare her to PJ Harvey or Beth Gibbons or Bobby Gillespie as you will (I did), but this is her 100%, and there’s nothing else like it.

10. Cable Ties — Far Enough (Merge)

Far Enough by Cable Ties

Australia churns out quality punk bands like the Hershey factory makes kisses, and Cable Ties, formed in Melbourne by four young rebels, ranks as one of the best to surface here in America this year. “Tell Them Where to Go” is the money track here, all rust-crusted bass crunch and ragged estrogenated vocal energy. But let’s not put them in the “girl band” ghetto. As I said in my review, “The easy thing would be to compare McKechnie’s vibrato-zinging vocals with those of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker or her verbal agility to Courtney Barnett, but the blunt force and agile violence of the music, brings to mind post-punk bands like the Wipers, Protomartyr and Eddy Current.”

Honorable mention

I also really enjoyed these albums in 2020.

Lewsberg — In this House (12XU)

Damien Jurado — What’s New Tomboy (Mamabird)

Bill Callahan — Gold Record (Drag City)

Mike Polizze — Long Lost Solace Find (Paradise of Bachelors)

Destroyer — Have We Met (Merge)

Decoy w/ Joe McPhee — AC/DC (otoROKU)

Thurston Moore — By the Fire (Daydream Library)

Tobin Sprout — Empty Horse (Fire)

FACS — Void Moments (Trouble in Mind)

Elkhorn — The Storm Sessions (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)

Howling Hex — Knuckleball Express (Fat Possum)

Wendy Eisenberg — Auto (BaDaBing)

Xetas — The Cypher (12XU)

Califone — Echo Mine (Jealous Butcher)

Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers — Vodou Alé (Bongo Joe)

Shopping — All or Nothing (Fat Cat)

Bonny Light Horseman — S-T (37d03d)

Tashi Dorji — Stateless (Drag City)

The Slugs — Don’t Touch Me I’m Too Slimy (2214099 Records DK)

Dr. Pete Larson and his Cytotoxic Nyatiti Band — S-T (Dagonetti)

4 notes · View notes

bandcampsnoop · 4 years

Audio

10/16/20.

Following up on the buick post from 10/5 that mentioned the short list of guitar-drum duos, I will add Gunn-Truscinski Duo. Soundkeeper follows Bay Head, their third album and one of my favorites from 2017. From the bandcamp notes:

With a decade-long partnership that’s far more like a real band than their discography might imply, "Soundkeeper" is the duo’s fourth proper album. No one-off blowing session carved into tracks, "Soundkeeper" is a focused realization of the pair’s full dynamic sweep. It’s music that goes straight for it, ecstasy and flotation and otherness, neither songs nor jams. Perhaps more like windows. Or events. It’s music that immediately goes out, gets out, stays out, has always been out, a glowing radius around the amp and drum kit, intimate even at volume.

I was transfixed by the photograph on the back of the album while listening to the track Ocean City. A playground basketball court enveloped by fog. No pickup games are being played during the pandemic. The improvised jam sessions of outdoor hoops have been paused. And so the ghostly fog settles in for a slow break. That is what it sounds like to me anyway.

#Gunn-Truscinski Duo #Three Lobed Recordings #Steve Gunn #John Truscinski #buick #micah

2 notes · View notes

therarefied · 4 years

Audio

Gunn-Truscinski Duo’s “Valley Spiral”

#gunn-truscinski duo #valley spiral

1 note · View note

bolachasgratis · 6 years

Photo

Bolachas Now Playing, 40/2017 (#125):

Jason Molina - Solitude Adrian Crowley - The Wish Adrian Crowley - Unhappy Seamstress Calexico - Voices in the Field Marco Z & The Pretty Dead Sea - The Most Beautiful Night Robert Plant - The May Queen Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Come and Be a Winner The Wood Brothers - River Takes the Town Curls - Gentle and Kind Gill Landry - The Only Game in Town Gambles - Hello, Laura (ft. Father John Misty) The Staves & yMusic - All the Times You Prayed Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band - Picasso Gunn-Truscinski Duo - Quiet Storm (Taksim III) Sufjan Stevens - Mystery of Love Peter Oren - Anthropocene Jim James - The World is Falling Down Nick Garrie - I'm on Your Side Korey Dane & Zella Day - Blood on the Mattress Joe Purdy & Amber Rubarth - Someone Singing to Me

6 notes · View notes

detroitlightning · 6 years

Text

Gunn-Truscinski Duo + Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society - The Storehouse, Galien, MI - 2018-04-22

Everything kind of came together for this one (wind aside, more on that below) - amazing venue, great folks, two new favorite bands that I hadn’t had the chance to see, and most definitely the nicest day of the year in what had been a pretty lousy spring in Michigan.

I was super excited to see both bands, and left very happy. Both Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society’s 2017 release, Simultonality, and Gunn-Truscinski’s, Bay Head were among my favorite records last year. Both remain in heavy rotation. It was ridiculous to see both bands on the same bill - check out their records!

The recordings came out mostly pretty good. I did have a little wind to deal with, and you can hear it show up from time to time - it’s a bummer. But I think I mitigated it for the most part in post-production, and the performance shines through.

Thanks to Michael & Penny for being such swell hosts - it was a really amazing day & I look forward to getting back to future shows!

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society

FLAC: http://www.mediafire.com/file/q8pp6bg1gldnlvg/ja2018-04-22.detroitlightning.2448.cm33.zip

Mp3: http://www.mediafire.com/file/4z0lbj80s1tp53n/ja2018-04-22.detroitlightning.2448.cm33_-_mp3.zip

Gunn-Truscinski Duo

FLAC: https://mega.nz/#!hKIQCYiY!KiFd0SmrPpCJrzSToTba97JuOahRPJjzwWO15RI-ghY

mp3: https://mega.nz/#!9HAChSKB!FEAZzNxzHKIVVooZe1qKLCwIkd4w6kbqXuAGKQQsjR4

#detroit lightning #joshua abrams #natural information society #steve gunn #john truscinski #gunn truscinski duo #the storehouse #detroitlightning

3 notes · View notes

djlook · 3 years

Text

Off the Air 3/15/21 Playlist

Thee Sacred Souls - Will I See You Again?

Brainstory - Beautiful Beauty

Myele Manzana - Brixton Blues

Gunn-Truscinski Duo - Seagull for Chuck Berry

Zella Day - Holocene

Lael Neale - Every Star SHivers in the Dark

Soko - Oh, To Be A Rainbow!

Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains - Coucou

Kate NV - Kata

Aksak Maboul - Un Caïd

Spacemen 3 - I Love You

Suicide - Dream Baby Dream

Bachelor, Palehound & Jay Som - Anything at All

L’Imperatrice - Hématome

CHAI - Donuts Mind If I Do

Boys Age - An Undersea Stone

Shintaro Sakamoto - By Swallow Season

Cornelius - Birdwatching at Inner Forest

Group Listening - Wenn Der Südwind Weht

Sven Wunder - En Plein Air

SPAZA - Sizwile

1 note · View note

still-single · 3 years

Text

all new HEATHEN DISCO up to listen to now - last show of 2020

Ep. 239 (12/27/2020)

https://www.mixcloud.com/mosurock/heathen-disco-show-239-27-december-2020/

tracks:

HOUR 1

Readymade – See Saw (Victor) / The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds (demo) (The Orb and Youth Present Impossible Oddities / Year Zero / both approx. 1990, re 2010)

Electro Group – Gong (Ranger / Pehr, 2017)

Cygnus – The Bodyscan (Neon Flux / World Building, 2020)

Slum of Legs – RUTHE14ME (Slum of Legs / Spurge, 2019)

Midnight Minds – Promontory (Wild Violet comp benefitting Chicago Community Jail Support, 2020)

Lush – Tiny Smiles (Spooky / 4AD, 1992)

Angel – Driving (Down) (Sky Girl comp / Efficient Space, 2016)

Chrisma – Aurora B. (Hibernation / Polydor, 1979)

The Midnight Steppers – Bleak Disco (Isolation Drives / Radical Documents, 2020)

Love as Laughter – Destination 2000 (Destination 2000 / Sub Pop, 1999 / RIP Sam Jayne)

Breastmilk – Expiate (Joyous Sounds comp / Chicago Research, 2020)

Narrow Head – Delano Door (12th House Rock / Run for Cover, 2020)

HOUR 2

Spiral Wave Nomads – Of a Similar Mind (First Encounters / Feeding Tube+Twin Lakes, 2020)

Randy Holden – Keeper of the Flame (Population II / Riding Easy, 1970/re 2020)

Heavenly Bodies – Triangle (White Dwarf / out sometime in 2021)

Jordan Reyes – Centaurus (Sand Like Stardust / American Dreams, 2020)

Lewsberg – Through the Garden (In This House / 12XU, 2020)

Lowlife – A Sullen Sky (Diminuendo / Nightshift, 1987)

FACS – Version (live) (Lincoln Hall Chicago, 2020 / self-released, 2020)

Theo Parrish – This Is for You (Wuddaji / Sound Signature, 2020)

Mort Garson – Rhapsody in Green (alternate take) (Music from Patch Cord Productions / Sacred Bones, re 2020)

Janedriver – Nude (You Know It’s True / self-released, 2020)

HOUR 3

Opal – Soul Giver (Northern Line EP / One Big Guitar, 1985)

Venus Fly Trap – Catalyst (Morphine EP / Tuesday, 1985)

Alf Danielson – Mary Had a Steamboat (7” single / Merge, 1992)

Vlimmer – Nacktheit (18 / Blackjack Illuminist, 2020)

Fire Dept. (Group) – Searching in the Wilderness (L’oeuf D’or / Hangman’s Daughter, 1995)

Siglo XX – Fear (It’s All Over Now / Antler/Straatlawaai, 1986)

Gunn-Truscinski Duo – Gam (Soundkeeper / Three Lobed, 2020)

Big Youth – Touch Me in the Morning (Natty Cultural Dread / Trojan, 1976)

Jim Ford – You Just-a (The Unissued Capitol Album / Bear Family, 2009)

Queen Latifah – Princess of the Posse (All Hail the Queen / Tommy Boy, 1989)

Quando Quango – Triangle (2 from Quango 12” / Factory, 1984)

One Way – You Can Do It (One Way Featuring Al Hudson / MCA, 1979)

2 notes · View notes

doomandgloomfromthetomb · 5 years

Photo

Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society / Gunn-Truscinski Duo - Union Pool, Brooklyn, New York, October 4, 2019

An exquisite double-bill from last month, brought to you by NYC Taper and Union Pool -- thanks, guys. First up, we get the Gunn-Truscinski Duo in full flight, delivering the electric blends we need. Two fresh improvs, plus a totally blissful reading of “Seagull for Chuck Berry.” I could listen to these guys play forever. Then, Natural Information Society take over, with Greatest Drummer Alive Jim White sitting in. Maybe it’s White’s presence or maybe not, but this is a somewhat harder-edged, more aggressive NIS, surging and soaring for close to an hour of unbroken, mindbending magnificence. Absolutely mandatory.

Oh and hey, speaking of Jim White, there’s a new Xylouris White record on the way via Drag City. It rules! The drummer also seems to have something going with guitarist Marisa Anderson, which should also rule.

#joshua abrams natural information society #jim white #gunn-truscinski duo #Steve Gunn

7 notes · View notes

onetwofeb · 4 years

Audio

2 notes · View notes

dustedmagazine · 4 years

Text

Gunn-Truscinski Duo — Soundkeeper (Three Lobed)

Photo by Vera Marmelo

Soundkeeper by Gunn-Truscinski Duo

The long track, “Soundkeeper,” one of two live recordings included on this double disc album, distills long glowing drones into translucent purity. It lays bloopy, shape-shifting whammy notes across glistening acres of hum. It floats a glitter of picked notes top serene, Caribbean-warm washes of ambient sound, and kicks long meditations into motion with restless, antic drums. It is the clear centerpiece of this wonderful album, the fourth from the duo of Steve Gunn and John Truscinski, and though you can envy the people making muted noises of approval from the room where it was recorded, you can also appreciate the way it spreads to fill a sunny, daydream-y afternoon wherever you are right now.

Gunn is better known for his songwriter albums, but he started as a guitar improviser. The first Gunn-Truscinski album came out a decade ago, and they’ve all been pretty wonderful. Still, this one is special, for its ambition, its clarity and its fundamental gorgeousness. For someone who L-O-V-E-D The Unseen In Between, this is a hard admission to make but Soundkeeper is better, maybe the best thing Gunn has ever put his name on.

Of course, it’s not just his name, but also John Truscinski’s; they are clearly equal partners. His work is varied and thoughtful and wholly musical, whether he is finding an erratic, skittery pulse in “Gam,” rolling awe-struck cymbals in “Distance” or rough-housing euphorically, all over the kit, in the long cresting climax of “Pyramid Merchandise.”

Soundkeeper contains 72 minutes of music, and while there are no dead spots, the album really hits its stride in the second half of the first record and gains traction through the long second disc. “Pyramid Merchandise,” the other live cut, starts the upward trend on Side B of disc one, starting quiet but blooming out into an explosive rock groove, the synergies between Truscinski and Gunn loose and freewheeling. “Ocean City, which closes out that side, is my favorite song on either disc, dropping big bloopy whammied notes like honey as the drums roll with complicated purpose, cymbals and toms in conversation. “Curtain” abstracts the blues into radiant, vibrating bent notes, left to hang and change and decay in the air.

The recording closes with another stem-winder, a long meandering tribute to Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel, whose work on “Maggot Brain” ranks high on the list of best guitar solos ever. Gunn pays homage loosely, without quotation, gettting the aura, not the notes, that made Hazel so great. “For Eddie Hazel” is a wild, incendiary close to an album that veers between pristine tranquility and full-throated freak out. If you like guitars — hell if you like music — don’t sleep on this disc.

Jennifer Kelly

#gunn-truscinski duo #soundkeeper #three lobed #jennifer kelly #albumreview #dusted magazine #steve gunn #john truscinski #improvisation #guitar #drums #eddie hazel

3 notes · View notes