Format: lathe

Matt Krefting - QuaranTunes Series No.016 ( / )

12″ Lathe. Edition of 37. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA. Mr. Krefting is a long-time friend of the FTR label. He has recorded a solo 10” lathe (FTR122), and albums with both Believers (FTR247) and Dead Girls Party (FTR279). We would happily welcome him into our homes any-dang-time-at-all, and so it was he appeared playing a Zoom concert on Friday July 31, 2020. Matt’s musical approach knows many alleys. But most recently this has involved sound generation using cassettes and perhaps also doo-dads of some sort (although it’s always the cassettes that provide the theater of the event). You might think there wouldn’t be much going for it visually (apart from a… Read more »

Village Of Spaces - QuaranTunes Series No.029 ( / )

12″ Lathe. Edition of 28. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA. In Western Massachusetts, the evening of Friday October 30, 2020 was cold and wet. But this Village of Spaces performance (with Dan Beckman-Moon, Amy Moon O.S., Kaethe Hostetter and Sean Breidenthal) took place in the lush backyard of a sun-dappled Santa Cruz house, with flowers and colors bursting everywhere. It was enough, just visually, for all of us to wish for instantaneous transportation 3000 miles west. That feeling was only amplified when the music started. The set began with “Song for Moon” (calling to mind the classicism of early Pearls Before Swine) and rambled through a variety of other acoustic settings, with… Read more »

Mozzaleum - QuaranTunes Series No.020 ( / )

12″ Lathe. Edition of 26. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA. On Friday the 28th of August (sometimes known as “Holyoke Halloween”), 2020, the three members of Mozzaleum broadcast this amazing Zoom concert from their basement lair in The Paper City. Three layers of sound, created by synth and synth-like objects wafted through the air like smoke from a gunfight in some Italian horror-western hybrid. As on the trio’s 2019 debut LP, Dark Ride (FTR444), the sound of Mozzaleum has certain Italianate prog flourishes, although on this evening there was a large gush of Germanic Cosmic Creationism in the breeze as well. And by slurping, pulsing and woozing at the same time, one… Read more »

Matt Sowell - QuaranTunes Series No.015 ( / )

12″ Lathe. Edition of 21. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA. Matt Sowell is a big guy with big hands who we met at the 1000 Incarnations of the Rose fest down in Takoma a couple years back. He let us release his fantastic debut LP, Organize or Die (FTR 541), and followed that up with this Zoom concert, broadcast from his home in Minneapolis on Friday July 24, 2020. Matt starts things off with few new tunes, which display some of the same multi-sector flow that marks the work of his guitar mentor, Peter Lang, as well as Lang’s fellow travelers at the Takoma Records HQ. Sowell’s compositions refer to this tradition,… Read more »

Papa Lee God - QuaranTunes Series No. 018 ( / )

12″ Lathe. Edition of 27. Numbered. loose leaf cover and back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA After having recorded the sheik of downfall creek LP (FTR 382) using the papa lord god soubriquet, this Tasmanian devil opted for a slightly diff handle for his live Zoom concert, which was broadcast from a secret lair on the morning of Saturday August 15 (although it was still Friday evening here in the Eastern U.S.) The music this time was different from the LP, but the mix of somewhat twisted roots music and avant garde proclivities was similarly canted and equally addictive.  One man, one guitar and one microphone. Apparently, you don’t need anything else. On this evening Papa Lee… Read more »

Wednesday Knudsen & Willie Lane - QuaranTunes Series No.017 ( / )

12″ lathe edition of 30. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA. OUT OF PRINT Not long after the release of their first duo LP, Long Time ‘Til Tomorrow (FTR 530), Wednesday and Willie played a concert in an old barn. It was the hot night of Friday August 7, 2020, they were scheduled to appear as part of the QuaranTunes Zoom concert series, and we were stoked to hear them stretch out in a live setting. With Willie on guitar and Wednesday on reeds, the music took off immediately and never touched earth again until they were finished. Listening to the combination of the extremely variegated guitar attack — floating, dodging, scrambling… Read more »

Jenifer Gelineau - QuaranTunes Series No.011 ( / )

12″ Edition of 28. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA. On the evening of Friday June 26 2020, at a bit past 7 PM (eastern), Jen Gelineau (the great violinist/violist for Donkey No No, Moose, etc.) performed a solo Zoom concert from a secret location in Greenfield, MA. Playing her instrument of choice, with some foot-activated “devices” attached, Jen improvised a lovely set of music, which is now properly documented. The first piece, “In,” is based on her arco work, which manages to combined avant garde musical elements while still sounding as though you could splice it into an episode of Ken Burns’ Civil War series. There’s an eternal quality to her… Read more »

Donkey No No - Face Off ( / )

12″ Lathe Edition of 20. Numbered. Bandcamp. Recorded as an alternate (partial) soundtrack to John Woo’s 1997 Travolta/Cage thriller, Face Off is the first DNN LP of the plague era. Of times this trio will give you specific info about where and when their recordings were nabbed. But now, with the Trump Era only just about kaput, information such as this is closely guarded. And rightly so. Cage and Travolta are both notoriously ticklish about musicians creating alternate soundtracks to their cinematic work, so one can only guess at what the two would make of the cavernous melodies and liturgical tones of DNN’s work here. Absolutely unlike any of their previous records, Face Off contains a wealth of sub-melodies, which… Read more »

Blanche Blanche Blanche - Food For Thought ( / )

7″ Lathe Edition of 24. Numbered. Bandcamp Blanche Blanche Blanche return to the apocalypse party after almost six years of total silence with their most recent LP, “Seashells”,  and now the shorter “Food For Thought “, which stands before you. As a diligent reviewer, leaving no painted stone unturned, one shouldn’t take this 7” as a mere loss leader compared to the empirically longer “Seashells” – Trust me, theres enough bullion in their non didactic pedagogy and tightly weaved voice leading, to keep your mind and heart healthy with plenty of contact in their crib. “Food for thought” lives up to its name by unearthing many alluring conceptual contrasts among its four tracks. But the 7”’ statement meets an extra… Read more »

Eric Arn - QuaranTunes Session No.010 ( / )

12″ Edition of 25. Numbered. Riso Looseleaf cover / back art printed at Looky Here. (note. variant cover art, some cover art will differ from others…) OUT OF PRINT Broadcasting from his home in Vienna on the evening of Friday June 19, 2020, guitarist Eric Arn put on a wonderful display of various ways to create sonic beauty. Playing acoustic guitar, and adding vocals at times, Eric’s material and highly melodic approach were an expansion of the form-moves he explored on his first Feeding Tube album, Orphic Resonance (FTR 281), rather than the more prickly textures displayed on its follow-up, Paranza Corta (FTR 384). Two of the tunes are covers — Peter Laughner’s classic mid ’70s ballad, “Baudelaire” and Jackson… Read more »