Indierock | Alternative Tape 431 Items

Daniel Johnston's `Alive in New York City': A full performancecaptured before a live audience in New York City, the city ofDaniel Johnston's dreams. Daniel is at the height of his performing powers, with his solo voice in full poignant bloom. A real time-capsule, each song is a gem rendered in full color by an artist dedicated to his craft. This LP captures him at an unusually happy point in his life, sharing the deepest parts of himself with his audience. We are given a rare glimpse into Daniel's heart, where the physical rendering he gives over to his lyrics transcends the music and works as a beacon into the tender mind of a genius - grappling with how to love himself and find his place in the world. This 2000 concert recorded and live-mixed by Kramer in NYC happened on a very special night and Shimmy-Disc is proud to present it to the world.As a bonus the free digital download card that accompanies each vinyl LP and the 56 minute Cassette release include "The Telephone Demos" - 18 minutes of bonus material comprised of some of the rarest audio treasures from the Daniel Johnston Archives - a series of "Telephone Demos" created by Daniel specifically for sending to friends over his phone. These little teleplays from Daniel's pre-"1990" days have never been heard before, so his fans will go wild with joy over this newly discovered and precious cargo from the mind of this one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable Artist.

See Through You is the highly anticipated 6th album from Post-Punk Legends A Place To Bury Strangers. Outpacing even their own firmly blazed path of audio annihilation, this album repeatedly delivers the massive walls of chaos and noise that every A Place To Bury Strangers fan craves in spades. See Through You is an explosive journey which explores the listener's limits of mind-bending madness while simultaneously offering the catchiest batch of songs in the band's discography. It’s a nod of the cap to the art school ethos of the band's origins, while forging a new and clear direction forward. Simply put, See Through You is an epic, instant classic.

Culled from half a decade of homefour-tracking, Remote Echoes is a hissy,crumbly, and ungrounded expressionof Clay Parton and Canaan Amber'songoing Duster project. A mix of cassetteonly demos released under the bannersChristmas Dust and On The Dodge, this14 track album also includes a bevy ofpreviously unissued stragglers. Duster'sunique blend of fuzzy guitars, bargainsynths, muffled percussion, and hushedvocals anticipated chillwave, mumblecore,and corecore, elegantly illustrating theholy trinity of slacker vices: cigarettes,coffee, and the weed supr eme.

The phoenix symbolizes a new beginning. The fire burns off the lastvestiges of the past as the bird spreads its wings and takes flightinto the future. The Polyphonic Spree harness the flames of rebirthon their 2023 full-length offering, Salvage Enterprise. Led byfrontman, founder, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and visionaryTim DeLaughter, the group embark on their next season. They'rereverent of their history, yet they're also ready for an even brightertomorrow."Across all of the music I've done, lyrically there's a sense ofdesperation and a moment of convincing myself I'm going to makeit through regardless of how the music dresses up," notes Tim. "Onthis one, I struggled with the amount of vulnerability I wasexperiencing and was willing to share both musically and lyrically,but ultimately decided to let it play out. Now that it's done, I'mhappy with the dance between the two. It's a `rising-from-theashes'record."Salvage Enterprise beckons complete immersion. Opener "GallopingSeas (Section 44)" affixes softly strummed acoustic guitar to anorchestral hum as Tim urges, "Hold on through the galloping seas.""We're all galloping through rough waters," he says. "I tried todescribe the process as well as I could and encourage people tokeep their heads above the storm and the waves. Ride it out. It'sgoing to be okay. It starts off very calm and introspective, and youcan envision where it's going."Flute echoes over nimbly plucked guitar during "Shadows On TheHillside (Section 48)" as keys twinkle. A glorious harmony amplifiesthe nostalgia of "Hop Off The Fence (Section 49)." It concludes with"Morning Sun, I Built The Stairs (Section 52)." Optimism strainsthrough his hopeful intonation, "I learned to fly, the more that Ibecome a new reason, I want to try," uplifted by boisterous hornsand cinematic strings. It crashes into an Ennio Morricone-stylecrescendo bolstered even higher by operatic vocals."There is an arc of leaving the world behind, stripping you...

7" and Tape in Gold or Silver with Poster, Postcard and five Poodle Pins. Destiny decides - golden edition comes with autgraphed postcard. Good luck!

"What happens when you take stop-start, prog-jazz weirdos Evil Usses and mix them with someone even stranger? Well, Ichi's DIY dada-pop genius isn't going to make things more normal is it?
Witness new combo Ichigo Evil knock at the doors of perception with dayglo skronk and one stringed fiddles. For fans of: Black Midi & Damo Suzuki, Melt Yourself Down, Cornelius." Headfirst Bristol Staff Picks

Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unrelivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitars strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality. With Bcmc, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde noir and fire-and-icy jams to recall bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life"s strange and sunny days. Cooper"s organ and synths and Bill"s guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, as set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of "em to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other"s sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance.

•Green and red cassette shells
•Dolby B noise reduction
•On-body print

•Dolby B Noise Reduction
•Double-cassettes in a butterfly case
•6 cassettes total (2 tapes per night)
•Cassette Shells with On-Body Printing

In 2023, King Gizzard performed multiple nights in cities across the Us-- this tour being known as the Residency Tour. This is one of those 3-night runs at The Salt Shed in Chicago!

Born in 1967 and former Wrestling Rock'n'Roll One Man Band Activist Lightning Beat-Man (1992-1999) turned into a Primitive Rock'n'Roll Blues Preacher in the Millenium Change and released countless recordings on several labels. 2017 he had a hand full of songs to record this album, the idea was to record it with several musicians and not showing them the songs, they went to the studio and Reverend Beat-Man played the songs on the guitar one time, then they had 2 takes for recording without rehearsal to keep it fresh. Anyway the idea was Free Style and so is that whole Album, the result was a mix of Blues Trash, New Wave Folk and Dark No Wave Garage Punk and Rock'n'Roll. He selected the NEW WAVE from musicians he loved the most at the momentNICOLE IZOBEL GARCIA is From Los Angeles with Mexian roots, a singer that has the gift to connect her voice direct with your heart, she plays an unorthodox organ and plays part of drums and percussion like the devil itself. With her, Reverend Beat-Man plays the most shows as a duet.MARIO BATKOVIC is a classical and kraut avantgarde accordionist. He creates film and game music and has a one man band himself he's a total genius (prodused by Geoff Barrow of Portishead).JULIAN SARTORIUS another Bern original, he's probably one of europs or even worlds most extraordinary drummers these days, he is one of the few drummers that can play his drums as an instrument not just as a machine, he plays a lot of free jazzand improvisation (sophie hunger, colin vallon trio, manuel troller, hans koch, bruno spoerri etc). RESLI BURRI is a legendary Bern musician who has a jam-band together with Mario and Beat-Man - he is a multi instrumentalist who plays in the Dead Brothers, Patent Ochsner , and is a film and circus music writer.

Legendary Dublin punk band formed in November 1978 by Maurice Foley (guitar/vocals), which had a number of iterations before disbanding in 1981. The Threat built up a following in Dublin and maintained a heavy reputation through the 1979 and 1980. Playing the legendary Dandelion on a couple of occasions towards the end of 1979 and became friendly with members of the Virgin Prunes and U2. Stano, another friend of the band, bought a synthesizer, purely as a sound generator, and joined them. As a nonmusician, his synth added noise and texture to the band's sound and brought out their experimental side.

This tape of the band's April 1981 gig in Limerick came to us a few years ago from one of the band members drummer Stephen O' Brien and it's been remastered for the perfect cassette experience.

Joe Sutkowski (Dirt Buyer)'s new album is a documentation of making it to the other side. Sutkowski grew up in New Jersey, and although he lives in Brooklyn now, he remains " an emo kid at heart ," garnering inspiration from bands like My Chemical Romance and Muse, the latter of whose theatrical, dramatic performances inspired the band's own vocal-forward, soaring takes. Initially working together as a duo while Sutkowski and Ruben Radlauer (Model/Actriz) were at school in Berklee, the band's self-titled 2019 debut album was recorded on an IPhone in their practice room on just drums and guitar, and the quietly striking, nuanced stylings earned them accolades far beyond the " fake record label " the two made up to originally release their music. The band's new album, Dirt Buyer II , was recorded in February 2020, and represents a foray into heavier material that marks a deeper shift for the band. Now working as a trio, Sutkowski is flanked by Tristan Allen on bass and Mike Costa on drums, a fellow Berklee grad who cut his teeth playing in bands across Boston including past collaborations with Sutkowski. Half-recorded while the band was on tour with Surf Curse, the record finds Sutkowski reaching out for places, people and beliefs to ground him. Throughout the album he attempts to wrap his head around the idea of fate and how you can brush up against other people and then leave them behind. The songs themselves play with this concept of light and dark intertwined. Oscillating between urgency and cathartic release and more stripped-back elegies, Sutkowski faces the reality that while the people he'd rather forget can still live on through music, he is able to move on at the same time. Half-recorded in his mother and uncle's upstate house where he turned the living room into a studio, he contemplates the beauty and disaster around him - all refracted through visceral visual imagery of how the physical earth meets the unknown to converge in something greater than ourselves. " This is all a living chronicle of all I want to do, which is feel good and be happy ," he admits. " I'm a completely different person now - a better version of myself ." Processing the past, Sutkowksi has emerged with newfound belief, fully intact and with a new path forward to the future.

Cashier is a band from Lafayette, LA that plays a washed out, fuzzy blend of shoegaze & indie rock. This two song cassette captures a unique ebb and flow between sonic intensity and harrowing urgency with melancholic flare and a DIY attitude.

For Lutalo, creating music is an act of hope in and of itself. Throughout their meticulously crafted folk, rock, and soul, on which theysing and play all the instruments, the Twin Cities-raised,Vermont-based musician embeds golden lines of poetry thatinspire curiosity about the world and empathy for everyone searching for a way through it.After releasing their 2022 debut EP,Once Now, Then Again, Lutaloemerged as a rising talent in the indie world, catching the attentionof Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold and Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker,who invited the young musician on tour. Following a vinyl releasewith that breakthrough project, they are releasing its companionEP,AGAIN, on August 25 via Winspear.On the ambitiousAGAIN, a collection of kinetic indie rock tracks,Lutalo makes bold critiques of systemic oppression, capitalism,and the digital attention economy. Though these topics are heady,their writing always sits at an accessible place of personalintrospection. Like on the arresting single "Push Back Baby," whosefuzzy electric guitar lines twist and unfurl in intricate patterns,Lutalo paints a complex portrait of our current reality that's "rootedin the greed or narcissism of capitalists," they explain. "I'm analyzingthose systems and patterns, and also asking, `Can we continue tonot perpetuate this?' Because it's hurt a lot of people historically. I'mjust asking people to question it."Through their music, but also through their lifestyle that's alternative to America's economic and political systems, Lutalo askslisteners to imagine new possibilities. "I want to help people ques-tion the way they're living," they say, "so we can create a betterreality for us to exist in together."

On Domino, Diners has replaced their gentle pop sound with a more bombastic rock and roll approach while maintaining their upbeat positive world view. Diners teamed up with power pop prince Mo Troper and Grammy nominated engineer Jack Shirley to deliver her best record yet.

Queer tweemo from the pop fringe of Little Rock, Arkansas's thriving '90s DIY scene. Paper Airplanes, Paper Hearts gathers Everyone Asked About You's complete recorded works, including the Let's Be Enemies LP and their two and a half 7"s released between 1997-2000. Remastered from the original DATs for maximum nostalgic crunch, this deluxe 2xLP is housed in a gatefold tip on sleeve and includes a 20-page book crammed with flyers, photos, lyrics, and an extensive essay on this crucial missing link between midwest emo and the Moog synthesizer.

ere it is! Volume 5 of the "Tapes Not Dead" series!!!! I'm super excited about how this years came out! I think it's one of the best yet! 21 awesome songs from bands and artists of today that release their music on cassette personally curated by yours truly.. Charlie Tapes. One of our main objectives as a store/label has always been to introduce new music in hopes you find something you really like. Tapes Not Dead is our mixtape to you!

Volume 5 also includes the ongoing Tapehead City comic series about a cassette who becomes a monster and befriends a girl named Keeks.



200 limited edition yellow copies were made using Fox Rtm911 which is one of the best performing tapes currently being manufactured.

The third album of the Italian hardcore band known all over the world! The fury of thrash metal combined with punk attitude is the right combination to define this album: it will crush your skull like a ton of bricks whilst embarking on an assault to your eardrums! A true masterpiece of the 80s to own in your collection.

Love + POP is a snapshot of a moment in not-so-far-away time; something fast, loud, moody and a little dangerous. It is, in some ways, classic Current Joys: full of wild ambition, sneaky hooks, and songs that move from concept to completion with prolific speed. But Love + POP also explodes myriad expectations with aggressive, deconstructed production, house music influence, and a guest appearance from Lil Yachty. It is not so much a twist as it is a unique multiverse identity for Current Joys, as Nick Rattigan's set out to "capture this sonic moment and harken back to the way I first released music." The story of Love + POP begins with one of those house parties: the kind that bulldozes your home and, in its aftermath, leaves a wreckage that finds you flattened but also ready to be new. In that mess and mayhem, Rattigan watched Everybody's Everything, the documentary of Lil Peep, and recorded a cover of "walk away as the door slams". But the itch wasn't scratched, and what began as a moment of homage morphed into something bigger, deeper and more fundamental, a point where the seemingly haphazard - in his home, in Peep's process - opened Rattigan up to an entire creative space and a new approach to bending or even detonating genre. Crucially, all of this was recorded at home, in what Rattigan calls a "tribute to the process of creating" in a DIY space. And what began as a singular passion project unexpectedly grew into a uniquely collaborative record for Current Joys. "I've set out to make collaborative records before," Rattigan explains, "but they often end up totally me, with just a couple exceptions. But then this record gave me the opportunity to be extremely collaborative, to let other people write instrumental tracks, sending links around for people to mess with and weigh in on. I sat down to do credits and realized here were all these people and styles and they all came together and worked." Love + POP's cover art is an airbrush/spraypaint rendition of the Wild Heart album cover, which is itself a photo of Rattigan's grandparents kissing. It is sacred in some ways and shredded in others. This idea - the aggressive reimagining of something timeless into a present, finite style - is Love + POP.

The 'Baptismal' project started out when Kramer invited me to collaborate with him on a project, and Itend to think in terms of what the listeners are open to hearing these days. In my mind was a recordingthat let the listeners leave the busy mind generated by mainstream media, so I came up with the idea ofa baptism, immersive kind of LP in which the listener would Become totally present with the music. Isuggested to Kramer the title 'Baptismal', and that the tracks would be called 'Gedunk', a comicalreference to the idea of being immersed in water, my own baptism as a child in the Christian faith, theBaptist church. I started by sending Kramer several tracks of Zither-centric music in the length ofindividual LP sides. Kramer would complement the tracks with plush drones and return it to me. Then wewould discuss. Soon we had enough material to move toward completing the album. I performed withpiano keyboard, ZITHER and voice. We collaborated entirely by sending audio files back and forth viaonline transfer. We haven't had physical contact at all during the project, but it went smoothly with someminor suggestions to help us to shape up our navigation til we finally arrived. The album cover wassuggested by Kramer, which I think is very appropriate. The project started in 2022. Mark Kramer, an oldyoung friend. We connected in New York City when he was here in the 80s.-Laraaji, Jan. 2023I met Laraaji by chance in NYC's Central Park one fine summer day in 1985. I'd been thinking about thewisdom vs. the futility of starting my own record company a lot in those days, and as I walked throughone of the parks many tunnels, I heard what I'd recognized to be Laraaji's 'Day of Radiance' playing onwhat i'd assumed to be someone's beatbox. I thought to myself, "How nice it is to be alive in NYC in 1985on a day like this in Central Park and knowing that someone loves this wondrous LP from Eno's ObscureRecords label as much as I do."But when I emerged from the tunnel I saw not a beatbo...

Die japanische Band Chai verzauberte die Welt 2017 mit ihrem Debütalbum Pink, einer Sammlung von Songs, die ihren einzigartigen, verspielten Pop vorstellten. Das enthusiastisch-feministische Nachfolgealbum Punk wurde von der Musikpresse und anderen Künstlern hoch gelobt. Das führte zu Wink, das Chai per Remote-Zoom-Sessions aufnahmen - eine Einschränkung, die sich als Stärke erwies, da Mana (Leadgesang und Tasten), Kana (Gitarre), Yuna (Schlagzeug) und Yuuki (Bass und Texte) mit Künstler*innen im Ausland zusammenarbeiten konnten, um ein Werk zu schaffen, das in ihrer internationalen Gemeinschaft Katharsis fand. Im Gegensatz zu Wink kehren Chai auf ihrem neuen, selbstbetitelten Album zu ihren Wurzeln zurück und lassen sich von ihrem japanischen Erbe und der Musik, mit der sie aufgewachsen sind, inspirieren. "Alles, was sich in den Texten widerspiegelt, drückt unsere Erfahrungen als japanische Frauen aus", sagt Mana. Chais Ethos ist das der Inklusion, und die erste Ssingle "We The Female!" - die live aufgenommen wurde, um die krawalligen Auftritte der Band zu würdigen - lädt die Zuhörer zu dieser Mission ein. Während ihrer Tourneen nach der Pandemie, bei denen sie vor riesigen Menschenmengen in Städten wie Santiago, Buenos Aires und Sao Paulo auftraten, wurde Chai klar, dass sie sich ein globales Publikum erschlossen hatten. Chai schrieben das neue Album unterwegs und fanden zwischen den Auftritten im Stones Throw Studio in L.A., in der Ometusco Sound Machine in Mexico City und in der Grand Street in New York Zeit für die Aufnahmen. Als sie erkannten, dass ihre befreiende, ermächtigende Botschaft auch für Menschen außerhalb Japans gilt, überlegten Chai, welche Facetten ihrer Erziehung beim Publikum außerhalb ihres Heimatlandes Anklang finden könnten. Auf Chai schöpft die Band direkt aus dem City-Pop, einem in Tokio entstandenen Sound, der in den 70er und 80er Jahren populär war. City-Pop war eine japanische Interpretation westlicher Lounge-Musik, die Anleihen bei Jazz, Boogie, Funk und Yacht-Rock machte, um einen Sound zu kreieren, der sich zwischen zwei Kulturen bewegte. Während der City-Pop in letzter Zeit über TikTok und YouTube ein US-Publikum gefunden hat, sind Chai mit diesem Genre aufgewachsen. Für die Produktion griffen sie auf ihren früheren Mitarbeiter Ryu Takahashi zurück, der ihre Vorliebe für City Pop, Eurobeat und die Melodien von J-Pop-Künstlern wie Maria Takeuchi teilte. "Sie wollten sich mit ihrer japanischen Identität auseinandersetzen, nicht im traditionellen Sinne, sondern auf diese gefilterte westliche Art", sagt Takahashi. Die Arbeit in gut ausgestatteten Studios ermöglichte es ihnen, mit einer Ästhetik zu experimentieren, die auf einem Chai-Album noch nicht zu hören war.

You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds. "It's pop music, basically." That "basically" qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020's Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer. "Fame" seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper's trademark. "Build a Bridge" pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto. On "Sub," Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It's festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! is about looking out for one another."

Clear w/ Black Liner Cassette.Hey Mercedes' stunning debut Everynight Fire Works cassette reissue on Run For Cover Records. Formed after the break up of Braid by Bob Nanna, Mark Dawursk and Damon Atkinson, Hey Mercedes' brand of emo-influenced alternative rock has stood the test of time as a more melodic but equally-as-important companion to the members' first band. In fact, in the many subsequent revivals of the emo-leaning alt-rock sound of the late-90's & early 2000s, Hey Mercedes is as much an influence on these bands as Jimmy Eat World, The Get-Up Kids, and The Ataris. Everynight Fire Works was originally released by Vagrant Records in October 2001. Remastered in 2016 by JJ Golden (Sunny Day Real Estate, Soundgarden).

An icy wave of distortion. Gristle and bone bass. Incantatory, bloodcurdling poetics. Anna Funk Damage returns to Osare! Editions with a full-length LP, laying down 13 occultist tracks, turbocharged by industrialism, dissolution and heartbreak. The Italian producer more than lives up to his namesake, delivering his signature, genre-destroying blend of experimental-punk-techno and steely dance floor deviance.

Opening with a howl, clatter and smash, on 'Sono Spento’, Andrea Natale takes the shape of a self-annihilating robot, his heavily pitched-down vocals laden in layers of FX. ‘Maybe I’ whirls into a slow build screech while 'Allegri Rimpianti’ joins together organic, pummelling percussion, sharp synth chords, and jangly guitar for a nightmarish trifecta of throbbing noise. Occasionally, Natale's presence falls away entirely, allowing for unadulterated machinic ecstasy to take over. Cogs grind on 'Memoria, Solitudine’, a dark and lolloping track, thrumming with sinister, malicious intent, before 'La Fine’ signs off, lurching skittishly like an anxious, artificially pumping heart.

Interweaving elements of avant-garde ambient, rock, and even black metal, all rewired through a Moog Dfam and a Mother-32 interface, II Corpo Che Si Rompe is powered by unrelenting energy as Natale descends to ever more demonic, punishing depths.

Girls At Our Best! were one of the greatest and most influential bands to emerge in the early 1980s as part of a new wave of independent acts. DJ John Peel championed them, playing their singles repeatedly and inviting them to record a session for his programme. Wry vocalist Judy Evans and brutal yet melodic guitarist James Alan who’d met at art college in Leeds fronted Girls At Our Best!, the proto-Indie band that formed from the ashes of Alan’s 1977 punk band SOS! Pleasure, the sole album, reached number two in the Indie Chart. It was an album so different from the rest of the post-punk indie pack that you can still play it now and completely baffle new listeners. As John Peel said about Roxy Music, it just doesn’t seem to relate to anything else.

The garage-y psychedelic outsider pop band Being Dead shines bright with their distinctly right-brain songcraft, mischievous humor, and implausibly great vocal harmonies. As they've graduated from curiosity to cult favorites, we've yet to encounter a single person who dislikes Being Dead. Recorded at Radio Milk, producer Jim Vollentine (White Denim, Trail of Dead, Spoon) spit-shines Being Dead's sound without diminishing their weirdo-best-friend vibes. Their penchant for idiosyncratic lyricism and musical unpredictability shines throughout the album as the duo moves between everything from garage rock and pop to Laurel Canyon-style folk.

Ace Cassette version (with 2 Extra Songs) of the recent LP from contemporary Irish guitarist Jonny Dillon. Beautifully recorded blues / folk guitar pieces. TIP!

Jonny Dillon’s debut acoustic album ‘Songs For A One-String Guitar’ took the listening public by surprise and the critics by storm when it dropped out of the blue on All-City in 2019. It represented a departure for an artist who was renowned for having the Midas touch when it came to coaxing dance floor fire from all manner of hardware. But fortune favours the brave and temporarily setting the machinery aside and following an acoustic path to the waterfall has already reaped rich rewards for Jonny Dillon. He’ll never say it in so many words but here’s a man on a mission: “Fail as I may, I have to go back and try again every time, to wait in hope for a glimpse of the spirit that hovers over the face of the deep, and to keep watch for the Light that shines in the darkness.”

The generosity of spirit which is the linchpin of all great music is something that can neither be cheaply conjured nor ever easily faked, god forbid. It’s the elusive emotional conductor in the spinal cord of sound - a foundational component of that mysterious feeling of connection we as listeners are seeking every time we put the needle on the record or press play on a song. The very essence of the thing we seek, in short. The holy grail. When sweet music hits, it’s the spirit that moves us and it’s both the source of the power within it as well as ultimately the place where it resides inside of us too, once heard. This is how music works. Journeying. Spirit to spirit. From the makers and dreamers of the dream to dreamers in general. The indomitable spirit inherent in the instrumental guitar compositions and distinctive finger picking style of Jonny Dillon is a case in point. This is spiritful music of a rarer kind made by an artist as inherently attuned to the troubling times we are living through as he is to the value of carving out new paths to the waterfall through the medium of sound on our behalf. Boom and there it is. Much needed guidance. A priceless new navigational tool of the imagination to help us all through the maze.

Just like the debut offering, this a path inherently worth following too, every step of the way. This time Jonny’s singular playing style finds true expression in a sound world expertly shaped by a master of the production craft, John ’Spud’ Murphy in Hellfire Studio. Masters at work, times two. Like all dream productions, it quickly assumes three dimensional proportions and becomes a place to go in and of itself, worth returning and retreating to, time and again. On A New Directive From The Bureau of Compulsory Entertaintment, his mode of expression is as clear and impactful as the immediate impression the sound makes on us. His is a strong game. He rises to the occasion and fulfils a great need on our part in so doing. We have to give thanks where it’s due. Balms for the soul are hardly two-a-penny in these challenging times but this is a timely one and of a lasting kind too. In stripping everything back and breaking his sound down into the bare component parts of reverberating steel strings on resonant wood, he has tapped into a kind of universal music of the spheres. It’s in tune with the times and more. Big picture sound with heart and soul to match. The iridescent sound he conjures from that same deep is a joyous thing to behold imbued as it is with a kind of light that never goes out. A dozen jewels adorn this timeless creation, each one a glimpse of eternity. They will shimmer forever. Man gets tired. Spirit don’t.

Dónal Dineen, January 2023.