LP with MP3 Download / Insert by Ben Chasny Edition of 400 Adhoc OUT OF PRINT First LP by Manas, a duo comprised of guitarist Tashi Dorji and drummer Thom Nguyen. Tashi, who’s based in Asheville NC these days, has been cutting a wide swathe through the guitar underground over the past few years. Originally focused on acoustic weaponry, he has added electric guitar to his arsenal, without giving up any of the weird angular bite of his initial work. Thom is known to have played with a couple of Asheville free rock bands, Nest Eggs and Mendocino, but this is the first exposure his excellent work will be having outside of Buncombe County. As a duo, Manas explores lots… Read more »
Search Results for: MANAS
Sciamachy
LP Edition of 500. $22 At last, the trade edition of Schiamachy has appeared, following the test-press/tour version by more than a couple of months. The album’s title is a term used to describe mock battles between warriors. It’s a fair description of the music on this record, although it’s safe to say the battle was a friendly one. Michael Zerang is a very well known percussionist, composer & improviser from Chicago, with an amazing jazz-based discography. He previously appeared on the Illinois Glossolalia LP (FTR 285) playing with Spires That in the Sunset Rise. Asheville-based guitarist Tashi Dorji is a generation younger than Zerang, but has been an unstoppable force since he hit the scene in 2009, playing in… Read more »
Alone We Are Alone As Far Down As The Sediment
LP Co-Release with Cardinal Fuzz, Radio Khiyaban, Ramble Records $23 MANAS – otherwise known as the duo of iconoclastic guitarist Tashi Dorji and drummer extraordinaire Thom Nguyen – have made tsunami-sized waves in the free jazz and improv scene with their numerous tape and LP releases (drawing praise and support from such luminaries and fellow-travelers as Bill Nace and Ben Chasny) and their face-melting live shows, including high profile touring with Godspeed! You Black Emperor. Back in the summer of 2019 they invited Naujawanan Baidar‘s N.R. Safi to sit in with them at a show organized at Fleetwoods, a self-proclaimed “rock and roll wedding chapel” in Dorji and Nguyen’s current home of Asheville, North Carolina. Captured on tape was roughly… Read more »
Astralturfing
LP Edition of 250. $22 Fantastic debut LP by this severely talented instrumental duo, currently based around Hampshire College unless I am much mistaken. Living Window is comprised of drummer Cameron Mitchell and guitarist Mila Dorji, who have create an album of pile-driving avant garde hunch reminiscent of pre-Mahavishnu McLaughlin’s slow-hand recordings with Tony Williams or Billy Cox. Mitchell drumming mixes rock and jazz attacks in equal measure, either drawing out rhythms or pounding them straight into pumice. And Dorji collects his amped notes into a huge mass before he releases them, displaying far more taste and patience than most of his contemporaries. This kind of jazz/rock guitar/drum dueling can be traced back (more or less) to Doug Snyder &… Read more »
dead cities lie buried / lift comrades, lift comrades!
CS Edition of 100 OUT OF PRINT This new tape by Asheville NC’s Tashi Dorji is a hard-edged suite for solo acoustic guitar recorded in the depths of the Plague. Because I’ve been listening to Remko Scha a lot lately, it’s impossible for me to not-imagine the music here (especially the title track) as an extension of the marvelous Machine Guitar works by that great Dutch artist. Tashi is known for creating harsher acoustic tones then many of his contemporaries, but that often seems more based on his decisions to constantly disrupt melodic expectations inside his work. On “dead cities lie buried…” his approach has a massive circular logic, in which small sonic events take place behind a revolving, repetitive… Read more »
ST
LP Edition of 300 Includes Download Code with LP. OUT OF PRINT Bandcamp The Sound Projector Review Eddie Flowers is a legend of the American rock sub-underground. Starting as an Alabama-bound fanzine scribe back in the early ’70s, Eddie drifted to Bloomington to lend his presence to the Gizmos in the days before “punk” was codified. Next, he turned up in L.A., where he founded the legendary acid squawlers, Crawlspace. Crawlspace was a thoroughly nuts collection of loosely rotating heads, who existed from 1985 into the new century. They played few actual “shows,” but still managing to churn out endless documents of their music making. Still, Crawlspace’s few vinyl offerings are exquisitely fucked, and include some of the first heavy… Read more »
Mette Rasmussen / Tashi Dorji
Tour CS with Download Slip Edition of 200 LP Edition of 250 with Download. OUT OF PRINT Mette Rasmussen is a Danish saxophonist, based in Norway, who has been recording with some of our favorite players (Chris Corsano, Alan Silva, Mats Gustafsson, Ace Farren Ford, etc.) She has also formed this duo with Asheville-based guitarist, Tashi Dorji (whose combo, Manas, has had two LPs on Feeding Tube this far — FTR208 & FTR330). The duo material for this LP was recorded in Montreal, right around the same time Mette and Tashi recorded a trio set for Trost (with the addition of drummer Tyler Damon). And it’s all great stuff. Mette’s playing has a raw tonal approach that makes one think… Read more »
III
LP Edition of 300 Cover Art by Bill Nace Still Single Review OUT OF PRINT Unlike World War 3 II, which referred to the second album by that thuggish UK band, or Manfred Mann’s Chapter III, which referred to the third outfit led by Mr. Mann, Manas III is neither the third album by Manas, nor the third iteration of the band. Rather, it refers to the number of participants on the second album by this spectacular Asheville NC unit, previously known primarily as a duo. The two main actors in question are guitarist, Tashi Dorji, and drummer Thom Nguyen. Tashi’s earliest recordings were largely acoustic abstractions, lauded by everyone from Ben Chasny to William “Bill” Nace. Thom’s drumming has… Read more »