Ulaan Khol - I (Soft Abuse, 2008)

1 Untitled (3:17)
2 Untitled (4:37)
3 Untitled (7:12)
4 Untitled (3:05)
5 Untitled (4:58)
6 Untitled (3:15)
7 Untitled (5:05)
8 Untitled (1:59)
9 Untitled (3:15)

Enième et dernier projet en date de Steven R. Smith, on croirait entendre un groupe psychédélique japonais, guitare primitive noyée dans un océan de bruits...

Throughout his career as a solo artist, and through membership with the celebrated ensembles Thuja and Mirza, Steven R. Smith has had a hand in creating some of the most compelling and singular instrumental psychedelic music of the past ten years. Smith's latest project, Ulaan Khol, moves beyond the Eastern European-inspired sources and scales employed by his work as Hala Strana towards an approach alternately true to his personal musical lineage and in a realm beyond any pre-existing work. As Ulaan Khol, Smith digs in deep with a palette of drums/guitar/organ to craft a monolithic & expansive free form, feedback-heavy atmospheric din that bonds the disparate realms of Fushitsusha and High Rise with Popul Vuh and Flying Saucer Attack.

As Ulaan Khol, Smith has planned a maximalist three-part suite, 'Ceremony.' In the first installment of the trilogy, I, the tone is overwhelming bleak as the pieces (all untitled) caterwaul, moan and crumble. Dripping with basement doom, Ulaan Khol's cosmic histrionics emanate with the raw essence of White Light/White Heat jettisoned by Harmonia's amorphous drifts.
Soft Abuse

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Steven R. Smith - Kohl (Jewelled Antler, 2002)

01 Kilim And Dirt
02 Kohl
03 Tent-Pegging
04 Marjan
05 White Saxaul Trees
06 Isfand
07 Odwalla
08 Eulnek
09 Barkane

Comme le dit le label Emperor Jones pour la réédition de 2005 de cet album: un homme et sa guitare face au monde...

Members of the Jewelled Antler Collective share a fondness for personalizing gestures. This LP, which is a reissue of a 2002 Jewelled Antler CD-R, remains true to that aesthetic. Steven R. Smith, who also plays in the improv quartet Thuja and makes ersatz Eastern European folk collages under the name Hala Strana, made a woodcut for each track and another for the album. He included all save the last in a chapbook that also includes a little bag of seeds and another of powdered coal (check the title, kids). The latter inclusion should not be considered a comment on this record’s merits as a gift; it’d be a mighty swell thing for St. Nicholas to leave under your tree, and not just for the nifty packaging.

Kohl is a benchmark entry in Smith’s burgeoning discography, distinguished by both its performance methods and the emotive qualities of its music. Most of his solo efforts are made over a long period of time and feature overdubbed layers of guitars, keyboards, and other things with strings; these nine instrumental tracks were recorded mostly live, one a night, over a couple weeks, with very little pre-composing, on acoustic and electric guitar. The lack of premeditation, one imagines, allows Smith’s an unfiltered glimpse of the soul and sentiments that have animated such stirring efforts as Fieldings and Lineaments. If so, Smith is possessed by equal measures of melancholy and grim defiance.

The opener “Kilim and Dirt” rings out with stark clarity, its choppy chords as remorseless as a forced retreat from the plague lands under black skies. The title track is composed mostly of echoing harmonics that flash like lightning against a background drone. The effect recalls Loren Connors more reflective late-'90s efforts, especially when a tape of an old fiddle tune creeps in near the end, nearly hidden in the same way that vocalist Suzanne Langille’s called out from way behind Connors’ guitar. On the flip side several acoustic tunes, including a funereal cover of the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s exit march “Odwalla,” extend the tragic, dying campfire vibe. The sense of singularity and significance of mood that Kohl evokes (in concert with its hand-crafted packaging) are things to treasure.
Dusted Review (review for the 2005 reissue by Emperor Jones)

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Steven R. Smith - From Ashes Come (3 Acre Floor, 2000)

1 Loomings (4:22)
2 Footfalls Stitched Among Others (3:01)
3 Her Walking Dress (8:02)
4 Latitudes (2:31)
5 Behind And Before (6:16)
6 Dusking (6:30)
7 Tow-Line Onto Surface (4:34)
8 To Rise And Move On (3:52)

Riffs épiques et crescendos apocalyptiques...

Before his imagination fled into the shadows of walled hamlets and wooden chapels and evolved the mysteries of Hala Strana out of East European traditional musics, Steven R. Smith was busily making soundtracks for more barren landscapes. From Ashes Come (1999) and Slate Branches (2000) are characterized by atmospheres constructed around the electric guitar, both records being chock full of epic riffs and apocalyptic crescendos that take their time growing from the bracken and ashes of weird percussion, drones, bowed wails and toy piano melodies. Wonderful, lonely, reverb soaked instrumentals that make perfect rainy day soundtracks. Steven R. Smith has always been an inventor of instruments, and while now he's more obsessed with experimenting with the mechanics and tonalities of Hungarian traditional instruments, on these earlier records recorded under his own name we recognize a spirit more akin to Harry Partch, where unusual and/or abandoned objects are modified and given a musical -- if only fleeting -- life. Perhaps with some of the earliest Thuja, these recordings are very much at the root of things for what was to become the Jewelled Antler family tree. (If you're not convinced you need them both, From Ashes Come might be closer in nature to the epic moods of Mirza while Slate Branches indulges more in sublime tonalities and atmospheres before divulging its rock).
Aquarius Records

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Steven R. Smith - The Death Of Last Year's Man (Emperor Jones, 1999 (2000 reissue))

1 I Tried To Leave You
2 Death Of A Disco Dancer
3 Morning Dew
4 Regen Volt, Soka Lesz

Recueil de deux morceaux parus sur un 45t épuisé sorti sur Autopia et de deux inédits, soit quatre reprises au total...

Four covers done by Mr. Smith that were released previously only on vinyl, two from a now out of print 7" and two never before released tracks. If you've heard Steven R. Smith's other recordings you're probably aware that he excels in the art of whiskey soaked, tape saturated drone rock. His cover of Leonard Cohen's "I Tried To Leave You", which starts off the disk certainly testifies to that. All the best moments of the Dirty Three, but with the balls of the Velvet Underground and somehow wrapping into it all the garagey psychedelia of Six Organs of Admittance or Vibracathedral Orchestra. Along with the Cohen' track are covers of the Smiths ("Death of a Disco Dancer"), the Grateful Dead's old standby "Morning Due" (equally brilliantly liberated a la Einsturzende Neubauten's version) and a cover of Muzsikas' "Regen Volt, Soka Lesz." And, we might add, all done as instrumentals. For those of you who haven't heard his albums yet, this is a really great introduction to Smith's mysterious and romantic sonic world!

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Steven R. Smith - Autumn Is The End (Darla Records, 1999)

1 Redivivus
2 Sifting Chimelle
3 This Fleeced Reel To This Nothing Already Then
4 In Held Ambit Gilding
5 Wan And Smiling Assent
6 Ohne ... / Long, Long Hence

Bande son à la Ennio Morricone....

Critically aclaimed Autumn is the End is the second solo record from Steven R. Smith of Mirza. The first was self released on Mirza's Autopia label in 1996. The new record creates a mood akin to a barren, Ennio Morricone-esque landscape caught in the decline of the season. The warm Indian Summer air gently bakes the last of the season's flowers. As the fall approaches, sinewy instrumentation and percussion echo and wrap around each other with a pervasive air of longing and nostalgia. This is an instrumental soundtrack for more introspective moments, when time seems to wind itself down, and one gains opportunity for perspective on the landscape.
Darla Records

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Hala Strana - White Sleep (Soft Abuse, 2006)

01 White Sleep
02 Dream Forever
03 Untitled

Enregistré dans des conditions qui créent une astmophère fantômatique, ce disque défie toute forme de catégorisation formelle, les morceaux arborent le cachetde l'ancien, quelque part entre le folklore d'Europe de l'Est et le drone... (à noter la reprise du "Dream Forever" des Dog Faced Hermans)

White Sleep was gone in a blink of an eye upon its release, but keep those eyes/ears open anyway. The diminished aural capacity of a lathe-cut record (pressed by the one and only Peter King out of New Zealand) lends its music a ghostly, tinny quality, which is perfect for Steven R. Smith?s work as Hala Strana. These three compositions combining multi-track recordings of live instruments with minidisk and boombox overdubs?conjure a dreamy symphonic swell that defies easy categorization. Beset with wheezing ambient tones and degraded surface noise, these mournful pieces (including a Dog Faced Hermans cover!) sound positively ancient and fall somewhere between Eastern European trad folk, the homemade primitive works of Harry Partch and the early noise drone of Velvet Underground.
Foxy Digitalis

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Steven R. Smith - Gehenna Belvedere (Autopia, 1996)

*** no cover art, sorry ***

01 A Partisan To Its Gulch
02 Capon
03 Trait One
04 Birr Trull
05 Benison
06 Trait Two
07 Shivaree
08 Stoitering Wherret
09 Tent's Merry Andrew
10 Trait Three
11 From Dotage To Consecration

Deuxième réalisation solo de Steven R. Smith: guitare psychédélique...

Second solo release of Steven R. Smith: psychedelic guitar...

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Mirza - Anandromous (Darla Records, 1997)

1 Dream Of The Fossil Sea (13:49)
2 Aphasia (4:42)
3 Bless This Gathering (10:28)
4 These Are Our Last Days (9:59)

Psychédélisme instrumental et fantomatique...

Mirza, which means "royalty" in Persian, are a San Francisco quartet who play ghostly instrumental psychedelic sounds. This is their debut. It's like Magic Hour or Bardo Pond, if either of the aforementioned were from India. Perhaps they are the paisley side Rodan never had. The music is like lying on the grass in Golden Gate Park & watching the sun filter through the big evergreens while Jefferson Airplane blast away at an electric love raga with Ravi Shankar.
Recorded by Tim Green (The Champs, Nation of Ulysses). Group member Steve R. Smith releases solo material as well (Darla, Autopia, 3 Acre Floor)

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The Jewelled Antler Library Book 1 and 2 (Porter Records, 2008)

Book One
Green Laughter
1-1 Loren Chasse Green Laughter (18:11)
1-2 Loren Chasse Footpath 1 (1:02)

The Dreadful Gift
1-3 Tomes Part 1 (10:04)
1-4 Tomes Part 2 (10:38)
-
1-5 Loren Chasse Footpath 2 (1:11)
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The Sun Is The Lamp
1-6 The Ivytree The Withering Year (2:53)
1-7 Ivytree Inner Groves (6:13)
1-8 The Ivytree White Sun (5:41)
1-9 The Ivytree Lake Of Fire (3:29)
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1-10 Loren Chasse Footpath 3 (0:47)
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Karst E.P.
1-11 Hala Strana Cutting Durmast (3:13)
1-12 Hala Strana Karst (5:12)
1-13 Hala Strana Sztajer (Trad. Polish) (3:13)
1-14 Hala Strana Cantecul Miresei (Trad. Romanian) (3:08)
1-15 Hala Strana Nettles (3:14)

Book Two
Their Feet Are The Foraging Ground Of Wolves
2-1 Dead Raven Choir Night Scene (8:29)
2-2 Dead Raven Choir The Horn's Sound In The Wood ... (5:45)
2-3 Dead Raven Choir The Shepherd's Hour (6:50)
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2-4 Loren Chasse Footpath 4 (2:01)
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Silvery Branches
2-5 The Famous Boating Party White Butterfly (3:37)
2-6 The Famous Boating Party The Orange Bears (3:36)
2-7 The Famous Boating Party Albion Moonlight (3:37)
2-8 The Famous Boating Party The Great Sled-Makers (3:20)
2-9 The Famous Boating Party The Deer Is Humble (2:40)
2-10 The Famous Boating Party Follies Of Summer (2:33)
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2-11 Loren Chasse Footpath 5 (1:27)
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Zwuij
2-12 Uton Zwuij 1 (5:35)
2-13 Uton Zwuij 2 (8:06)
2-14 Uton Zwuij 3 (5:29)
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2-15 Loren Chasse Footpath 6 (0:37)

réédition des douze volumes de la Jewelled Antler Library plus le CDR limité de The Ways of God to Man et des fields recordings de Loren Chasse.... Pour les amoureux de folk étrange....

With 13 groups, 59 tracks and over 4 hours and 40 minutes of music and sounds, the Jewelled Antler Library 4 CD box-set brings together experimental music from the U.S., Finland and New Zealand that ranges from psychedelic, abstract drone, soft psych, noise, folk and field recordings, to the outright strange and bizarre. Four CDs that collect together the entire 12 volume set of the limited edition Jewelled Antler CD-R Library, plus the limited edition recording of The Ways of God to Man and also 12 new field recordings by Loren Chasse. Musicians include: Fursaxa, Uton, Loren Chasse, Tomes, The Ivytree, Hala Strana, Dead Raven Choir, The Famous Boating Party, Claypipe, Muons, Thuja, Kemialliset Ystavat, The Ways of God to Man. This is a 1000 limited edition box-set. The box-set is made of chip board stock with the Jewelled Antler logo debossed in metal foil, includes 14 heavy stock panels with original artwork, CD faces have printed photos by Loren Chasse.
Porter Records

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Steven R. Smith - Tableland (Emperor Jones, 2001)

Tableland (16:25)
Blood Partridges (6:07)
A Celebration (4:10)
Caprock And Shelf (5:24)
Glade (2:47)

Le premier morceau d'un quart d'heure s'écoule comme un long flot zen de guitare, piano et harmonica, le reste de l'album sonne comme les morceaux psyché de Roy Montgomery (on va en mettre bientôt), tandis que Caprock and Shelf ressemble à une bo d'Ennio Morricone tournant au drone.

Steven R. Smith speaks in a language that hasn't been explored to death already. He's one of the few artists making instrumental music who isn't traveling familiar paths.

Emperor Jones

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Steven R. Smith - Antinomy (Digitalis, 2004)

1 untitled
2 untitled
3 untitled
4 untitled
5 untitled
6 untitled

"Six gorgeous instrumentals, all dark and dreamy, ranging from heavily reverbed Appalachia, to haunting and spare abstract ambience. Electric guitars waver and shimmer in a vast cavern of sympathetic overtones. So beautiful. You can almost picture a lone hooded figure, perched on a small outcropping of rock, playing strange mournful odes by the light of a lantern, serenading all the creatures in the dark, kept at bay by the light, and narcoticized by the tranquil and elegant sounds. So nice." – Aquarius Records

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