Second Pressing. $20 LP Edition of 300. Included DL. Cover art by Hannah Brookman No stranger to the Berkshire Mountains, Omeed Goodarzi comes at it in full on send it mode, with this yester-Moro-mobile of an album…. “Keep your eyes on the ball. Make it large make it small.” “Floating through the air, I don’t know how not to sing.” Loaded to the hilt with hard hitting session folk, Omeed’s latest offering is a roiling boiling psychedelic Partch-pop Beatleboro-Freel-Volk masterpiece from the second anyone’s flip flop even threatens to drive a rhythm into the rug. Upon arrival to the studio, Chris Weisman, Mia Friedman, Max Goldstein, Nick Bisceglia and Ruth Garbus were presented with the chord charts to Omeed’s carefully… Read more »
Search Results for: Mia Friedman
Low Effort Social Events
LP Edition of 200 New Massachusetts combo mixing the folks from Hollow Deck (Andy Allen & Mia Friedman) with three old pals who also passed through the Ran Blake Paddle Tunnel at NE Conservatory (Katie McShane, Jesse Heasly and Nick Neuberg). The results are, as the old men say, a real gas. Although it’s not a constant, there are moments throughout this album where the swonky collision of sax, guitar and drums puts me in mind of several classic versions of Beefheart’s Magic Band. Nothing along those lines in the vocal department (which are often delivered as casually as they might be by MX-80’s Rich Stim), but some of the harmonic threads are definitely of a Vlietian ilk. But there’s… Read more »
All The Roots
LP Edition of 300. Bandcamp Second album by Western Mass’s most exciting live band is now in hand, and it’s a swirling web of dooziness. Recorded by Ted Lee at Fayre Lawn, the team of Mia Friedman and Andy Allen have created a masterpiece of strange familiarities. Using a large array of instruments — banjo, gourd banjo, fiddle, guitar, tenor sax clarinet, flute, drum machine, etc. — the duo easily transcends any real or imaginary boundaries of what’s possible to do with just four hands. The results are as amazing as they are hard to categorize. Listening to the album for the umpteenth time, brings to mind a wide variety of things: an album I have of a high… Read more »
Of Thousands
CS17 Edition of 150 Of Thousand’s bandcamp Debut release by this very hep Boston duo made up of Arian Shafiee (Guerilla Toss) and Mia Friedman (Hollow Deck). Not particularly reminiscent of any of their ur-groups, the music from Of Thousands blends keys, strings, voices, electronics and loops into avant garde chamber sput with surly attitudinal content. One is reminded of the opening line os X Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!,” at least in terms of conceptual approach. Because while the audience is anticipating a tongue load of sugar, what’s delivered is a load more resembling porcupine quills. The most facile comparisons are to small bits found on the albums of European art rock legends like Slapp Happy and Vibraslaps, but… Read more »
Hobson’s Choice
LP Edition of 400. Co-Release with WeirdEar The debut LP by this Western Mass duo is a masterpiece of fractured air. The two performers are Andy Allen (from the original line-up of Guerilla Toss, among many other places) and Mia Friedman (whose collaborations apart from this include Lichen and appearances with Lauri McNamara’s Carbuncles). Previously issued as a cassette, Hobson’s Choice, is a blend of traditional and experimental approaches that alternately puts us in mind of several units inhabiting the landscape of Strange Maine over the last decade, and the animated ’30s cartoons of Max Fleischer. And Hollow Deck have a unique way of quivering between their two main style poles guaranteed to put hair on anyone’s chest. From its… Read more »