Split #17: The Ivytree / Chris Smith

I was elated to find this gem while browsing through Sound Exchange in Houston.

Fat Cat released it in 2005 as part of a series of split records. Hope you enjoy.

[full album] The Ivytree / Chris Smith

Side 1: The Ivytree (Jewelled Antler’s Glenn Donaldson)

Side 2: Australian guitarist Chris Smith

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The Skygreen Leopards: Gorgeous Johnny

The Skygreen Leopards return with Gorgeous Johnny, an album overflowing with ocean-bound storm-washed cars, the buildings of the city, and dimly lit rooms in San Francisco. It’s a sunburnt wasteland, still brimming with the memories of past friendships and old loves.

For Gorgeous Johnny, the Leopards had Jason Quever’s Pan American Studio at their disposal, which has given the production a great degree of clarity, and allowed the boys to augment their acoustic and electric guitars with walls of shimmering organ. This album really is a great place to hang around: more emanates with each listen.

The Skyband are also set for a short tour down the east coast. Dates can be found below.

{¤Buy Gorgeous Johnny¤}

[download] Can Go Back

[download] Goodnight Anna

Aug 1 2009 8:00P	Ghost Town Gallery	Oakland, California
Aug 6 2009 8:00P	Great Scott w/ WOODS	Boston, Massachusetts
Aug 7 2009 8:00P	Cake Shop w/ OUTRAGEOUS CHERRY	New York, New York
Aug 9 2009 8:00P	Velvet Lounge	DC, Washington DC
Aug 11 2009 8:00P	Smalls w/ OUTRAGEOUS CHERRY	Detroit, Michigan
Aug 13 2009 8:00P	The Whistler w/ Zelienople (FREE SHOW)	Chicago, Illinois

-kevin-

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Thuja Museum

[download] Thuja Museum #1 & #2

Jewelled Antler 3″ CDRs from 2002

Loren Chasse, Steven R. Smith, Glenn Donaldson, Rob Reger

[via Root Strata]

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The Skygreen Leopards: Gorgeous Johnny

The newest Skygreen Leopards album, Gorgeous Johnny, will be out July 21st on Jagjaguwar.

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Badgerlore: We Are All Hopeful Farmers

Badgerlore is the combined musical project of Rob Fisk (7-Year Rabbit Cycle, Deerhoof) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire), with Tom Carter (Charalambides), Pete Swanson (Yellow Swans), Glenn Donaldson (Jewelled Antler, Skygreen Leopards) and Liz Harris (Grouper).

“Old weird universe” describes their recorded output perfectly. The transcendental mystery of existence and of a constantly changing present, hearkening back to the source. Like the whisperings of the universe to all creation, to the plants, animals, rocks, and soil. The mystery of it all, unknowable and yet lucid. To view the Earth as though one has never before set eyes upon it. Its human systems, its natural cycles.

It is with suspense and beauty that the present slips past. Each moment set in stone and yet cast into the wind. Washed away by the tide. When space and time are merely constructs of a perspective, we are always at the beginning of all things. A portion of a beginning that never ends. Now has always been all there ever was. A chance to create anew, a time of creation.

[download] Whichever

[download] Duet

-kevin-

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The Skygreen Leopards, California’s Family Band

The Skygreen Leopards is a collaboration between Donovan Quinn and Glenn Donaldson. They have released six albums and an EP since their formation in 2001, and each successive album has witnessed a transformation of composition.  A river is never the same on two consecutive days, and Disciples Of California, the newest Leopards album, is arguably their “biggest riverboat yet”.

Disciples Of California is the first record to include The Skyband; Wymond Miles on pedal steel, Jasmyn Wong on drums, and Shayde Sartin on bass.  The basic tracks were recorded live in the studio, which gave the rhythm of the songs more space to breathe than on previous recordings.  The result is a jingle-jangling, gentle sway that lies somewhere between pop and folk.  Donovan Quinn and Glenn Donaldon’s highly expressive voices blossom through colored washes of pedal steel as electric twelve-string riffs rotate and slide by overhead. Acoustic strumming, warm and persistent, hold it all together even when the songs threaten to stumble and fade.  

Lovers and friends take the listener down the back roads of memory, through the sun-drenched fields and quiet evenings of the past. Like dreams, the songs present scenes that may seem new and strange, and yet somehow entirely primal; derivative of past experiences.  Under closer examination archetypes emerge, which may lead one to ponder the existence of a universal unconscious.  The idea that, at a certain level, we are all manifestations of a deeper archetype, a pattern of being that speaks through all of us.  As Glenn Donaldson said in an interview, “each song is a remembrance of a song not yet written.”

[download] Disciples Of California

[download] Places West Of Shawnapee

[download] Tents Along The Water (from Life And Love In Sparrow’s Meadow)

[download] Minotaur (Burn A Candle For Love) (from Life And Love In Sparrow’s Meadow)

-kevin-

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Flying Canyon

Flying Canyon is the project of the late, great, Cayce Lindner.  In 2006, Cayce Lindner (of Golden Hotel) recorded some of his songs in an oval, high-cielinged, wooden living room with Glenn Donaldson and Shayde Sartin following along from the next room on drums and bass.  Most of the songs were recorded live in just a few takes, with limited overdubs of vocal harmonies, organ, and a few other instruments.

In the songs, Cayce’s amazing voice stretches out as the center of slow, soaring, “California Doom Folk”.  Abstract imagery and stream-of-consciousness style lyrics gently ripple past, like slowly rolling clouds, touching on pain but ultimately transcending it in a warm, comforting glow.  It’s the type of album that reveals more with each listen. 

Glenn Donaldson, Cayce Lindner, Shayde Sartin

On Soft Abuse’s website, Glenn Donaldson has put together a wonderful history of Flying Canyon.  It attempts to chronicle a small part of Cayce’s story leading up to his death on February 6th, 2007. 

“His new songs were just so amazing. He played one over the phone to me late one night, & it made me cry. We managed to get two of them on 2″ tape a week & a half before he died at Jason Quever’s studio. We finished two epics, 17 minutes worth in total. There are some great live recordings too & unreleased tracks from the previous sessions. There are demos & cassette experiments too, & also some amazing Golden Hotel stuff somewhere.  [His brother,] Sid, talked of getting it all out there on his Broken Sparrow label, & I can’t wait.”

You can buy a copy of Flying Canyon’s CD here. It’s out of print, so the copies that are still floating around might not be around much longer.

[download] Down To Summer

[download] Crossing By Your Star

[download] The Bull Who Knew The Ring

[download] This Can’t Be My Home

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Giant Skyflower Band

Giant Skyflower Band is one of the more recent incarnations of multi-instrumentalist Glenn Donaldson.  As one of the founders of San Francisco’s Jewelled Antler Collective, Donaldson has founded and played in a number of bands, notably The Skygreen Leopards, Flying Canyon, Thuja, and The Blithe Sons.  He has also released solo records as The Ivytree and The Birdtree.  

With Giant Skyflower Band, he invited Shayde Sartin to “smoke marijuana & make up strange pop songs.”  The album is centered around Glenn Donaldson’s warm acoustic strumming, and is fleshed out with sitar and a soft wall of bass, and drums.  It is music for the inside of the mind, and it is also music for flights through the sky.  Sometimes flying sunwards, sometimes being gently lowered back down to seaside cliffs and forgotten trails, the music crumbles and reforms again before finally returning home.

[download] Oh Mary Green

[download] Bitter Wild Rabbit / Builds The Bone

If you so desire, Soft Abuse can send their CD to your home for just $11.

-kevin-

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