Klang: reviews

Ironto Special - ... if this one doesn't make you tap your feet ... you really should check to see if your soul is intact (Nine Bullets)

2011-11-18T10:31:40-05:00

I have always loved bluegrass but have found very little of the modern stuff that really piques my interest so I haven’t really covered the genre all that much around here but classics such as The Carter Family are a staple in my playlists at home. So I was happily surprised when I discovered The Black Twig Pickers’ Ironto Special. It is a solid ‘shine swillin’ fest from the opening instrumental “Don’t Drink Nothin’ But Corn” to the closing march “Rockin’ in a Weary Land”. This heavy on the fiddles doesn’t suffer from trying too damn hard. The tracks consist of thirteen Appalachian classics and two original with all the traditional instruments you’d expect to find in a ‘grass band and some of the lesser known such as washboard, bones and mouth harp. It honestly sounds like these guys had an amazing time playing and recording this one. You can just feel it while you listen. I swear if this one doesn’t make you tap your feet, at the very least, then you really should check to see if your soul is intact!

-- Romeo Sid Vicious, Nine Bullets

Glory in the Meeting House - ... top of the pile as far as modern Gospel goes. (Nine Bullets)

2011-11-18T10:29:09-05:00

Now if there is anything I am a sucker for it’s a Gospel tune! I have my grandmother’s, God rest her soul, collection of Elvis doing Gospel, Johnny Cash’s Gospel songs can bring a tear to my eye and of course as I mentioned above the classics like The Carter Family. You bring a fiddle to the party and sing about Jesus or hellfire and I am likely going to be a fan. I already had the album above in my dirty little sinning hands when I came across the very same backing some dude named Charlie Parr with whom I was not familiar. I quickly became a fan of Charlie and a bigger fan of The Black Twig Pickers. If Ironto Special makes you want to throw some corn squeezin’s down the hatch them Glory in the Meeting House is just as sure to make you want to repent, grab a snake and start praisin’ Jesus. You just can’t beat old time Gospel songs and with the instrumentation from The Black Twig Pickers it is top of pile as far as modern Gospel goes.

-- Romeo Sid Vicious, Nine Bullets

Even to Win is to Fail/EastMont Syrup - ... from dark haunting twang to old timey blues, from rollicking hoedown to mournful lament. (Aquarius)

2011-06-30T14:10:21-04:00

A fantastic split lp released for Record Store Day, on one side Mr. Glenn Jones, formerly of modern krautrockers Cul De Sac, now an undisputed master of the Appalachian guitar, on the other side, a bluegrass hoedown teamup, bluesman Charlie Parr and country string band the Black Twig Pickers.Fans of Jack Rose (who Jones dedicated this record to), James Blackshaw, Marisa Nadler, Ilyas Ahmed, Tom Carter and the like who haven't heard Glenn Jones, now's the time to remedy that for sure. Lush tangles of intricate steel string picking, gorgeous melodies, plenty of buzz and slippery slide, rich overtones, from moody dark drift to effusive folk flecked twang, every track here is a gem, Jones a modern master of the Appalachian guitar. The flipside finds Parr shacking up with The Black Twig Pickers for a serious hootenanny, a back porch, sun-going-down, campfire country folk bluegrass jam session, fiddles, banjos, steel string guitars, all whipping up a wild rollicking country workout, from dark haunting twang to old timey blues, from rollicking hoedown to mournful lament... LIMITED Record Store Day release, so these may not be around for long. Housed in a super heavy full color jacket, includes a download coupon, and multiple inserts, including some recipes from Charlie Parr.

-- Aquarius

Even to Win is to Fail/EastMont Syrup - Boston musician Glenn Jones shares the spotlight with Virginia backporch players The Black Twig Pickers and old school player Charlie Parr... (Hour Community)

2011-06-30T13:56:38-04:00

On this split release, Boston musician Glenn Jones shares the spotlight with Virginia backporch players The Black Twig Pickers and old school player Charlie Parr in an ode to sounds from the past and the now. Jones is best known for his work with avant-garde outfit Cul de Sac, but alone is where he burns brightest, tweaking his acoustic six- and 12-string guitars into realms previously inhabited by the likes of Fahey, Basho, Rose and Kottke. Meanwhile, the Twig Pickers and Parr have an old-timey, Wild Turkey-fuelled country blues hoedown, complete with foot stomping, yelps and flying tobacco juice.

-- Steve Guimond, Hour Community

Even to Win is to Fail/EastMont Syrup - One of the happiest surprises to manifest itself in vinyl form... (Chester Records)

2011-05-16T14:29:25-04:00

One of the happiest surprises to manifest itself in vinyl form on this recently passed Record Store Day is the split LP featuring the guitar talents of Glenn Jones and the grand Old Time shadings of Virginia’s own Black Twig Pickers in collaboration with Piedmont-style country blues specialist Charlie Parr. This lovingly crafted disc sheds a wealth of illumination upon the deep allure of various North American root forms that continue to provide valuable insight and inspiration for all sorts of contemporary players, essentially the spark that’s spurred an inexhaustible fire, and the only reason I can formulate as to why the Jones/Twig LP survived the consumer plunder of Record Store Day is simply lack of name recognition. So let me get right down to rectifying that situation. Glenn Jones burst onto the underground music scene way back in 1989 as a member of the amazing New England avant-garage group Cul de Sac. That band majestically weaved an assortment of disparate out-rock influences (Pere Ubu, Can, Neu!, Girls, Tim Buckley) into a discerning and uncompromising blend that stretched out over the landscape of nine albums, including two that were collabs with such formidable figures as the late John Fahey and Can’s Damo Suzuki. This bit of background is especially noteworthy in the case of Fahey, for his groundbreaking and frequently dazzling American Primitive guitar work is a huge influence on Jones’ own exceptional guitar style, and the vast yawp of Fahey’s Takoma Records roster (Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho. Peter Lang, Max Ochs, Harry Taussig) has been the center of affairs for Jones’ upstart solo work. While there are numerous worthy disciples to the American Primitive tradition picking and plundering all over the globe, Steffen Basho-Junghans, James Blackshaw and Sir Richard Bishop among them, the loss of Jack Rose to a heart attack in 2009 sort of left this micro movement without a clear leader. By the evidence on Jones’ side of this split, it’s looking like he’s stepping up to the head of the class. Titled EVEN TO WIN IS TO FAIL, its mixture of guitar and banjo instrumentals finds him simultaneously deep in the throes of American Primitive science and at the forefront of the style’s endless possibilities, extending them well beyond the present. The opener “Anchor Chain Blues” is so indebted to the gorgeous luminosity of Fahey’s early work that it would easily be mistaken for the maestro himself in a blindfold test. If this was the full extent of Jones’ exploration here, he’d be valued as a particularly inspired and adept copyist but not much more. Thankfully, this powerful channeling of Fahey’s exquisite gifts is instead a launching pad/ground base for some rich and multifaceted string construction. “The Great Pacific Northwest” begins as a continuation of the more contemplative side of Fahey’s youngish mode, a gesture that seems far less frequent in the new generation of American Primitive players, but by the end of the tune Jones has asserted himself into the full on post-John Hurt zone that makes all those Vanguard-era Fahey recordings so eternally rewarding. It’s on track three that the proceedings take an unlikely turn, landing smack dab in the wide open territory of a beautifully nude banjo. My first thought upon hearing this sly twist spanned all the way back to BANJO, Billy Faier’s sweet and neglected 1973 Takoma solo joint, but upon reflection this connection is only accurate in spirit. Faier’s crisp, ramshackle, rollicking style was very much about dexterity and Jones’ ruminations on the instrument are far more about mood. In this case one of sadness and melancholy. The track’s title, “On the Massachusetts Virginia Border” is I think indicative of Jones’ relationship with the Richmond-born Jack Rose and possibly serves as a tribute to that departed titans’ legacy. If I’m correct on these counts the tune’s contemplative air is an unmitigated success. And if I’m wrong, well, Jones’ artistry is strong enough to withstand the misinterpretation. Track four provides Jones’ side of the disc with its title, and it takes another fine detour, this time into realm of the steel string guitar. It’s here where Jones shines at his most original, still clearly American Primitive in outlook but reaching into largely uncharted waters. He does conjure up thoughts of Ry Cooder at his least commercially minded, but this is undoubtedly an associative leap on my part. Where many steel string new jacks are very much under the spell of the gigantic power of Son House’s stuff (the ‘60s-era work, to put a fine point on it), Jones instead utilizes the instrument for far more foreboding and personal ends. Side one’s final track “Tinka Marie” finds the banjo back in his sturdy hands, and once again it’s very much about texture. Easily the most relaxed and pretty tune of the bunch, it’s a fabulous denouement and summation of all that came before and points to the vast number of cards Jones has up his sleeve. He has a record set for release soon on Thrill Jockey and a joint DVD on deck from Strange Attractors Audio House, and my interest is seriously peaked. EASTMONT SYRUP, the Black Twig Pickers side of the disc finds us squarely in the middle of string band sensibilities, and while their seven tracks unwind that’s a fine place to be. Opener “Forky Deer” is loaded with much welcome fiddle action, but it’s the following cut, “Warming By the Devil’s Fire” that finds them really loosening up and melding with guest Parr, the whole crew throwing down a shithot batch of wound-up hunch that’s worthy of the ghost of Blind Willie McTell. The fiddle returns for the excellent if brief “Falls of Richmond” and that’s the mode that continues through the more upbeat “Horseshoe”. “Barnswallow” switches to an excellent solo turn for banjo, and “Wednesday Night Waltz” is an achy, forlorn lament, with loads of keening bow scraping to spare. Only on the final track “Death of Jerry Damron” do we get vocals courtesy of Parr, and his singing is in fine, mournful form. If it appears that I’m giving short shrift to the Twigs and Parr in comparison to Jones’ side of the disc, well that’s not at all the case. It’s just that the rich Old Time tradition of the Pickers is in far less need of deep description than the vast solo complexity of Jones. And when it comes to string band style, I’ll admit that my love of the genre finds me desiring my mustard uncut. With the exception of The New Lost City Ramblers and especially The Unholy Modal Rounders (one of my all time favorite bands of any stripe), I must fess up that any attempts at stylistic hybridization leave me chilly to downright cold. So the rough, raw textures of The Black Twig Pickers are right up my personal alley. Call me a purist if you must, but the front porch wrangling and wiggling of EASTMONT SYRUP is in no need of updating or sophistication. Just grab a jar, take a deep snort and huff. Then huff again. For it’s all right here.

-- Chester Records

Glory in the Meeting House - Charlie Parr and the Black Twig Pickers are stomping the bellows and the flames are tickling heaven and the rafters beyond. (Hinter Ground)

2010-12-13T11:14:21-05:00

Apologies: This Enlightenment is currently unavailable in your Country

Sometimes I think that Michael Hurley could make even the Devil (himself) calm down and stop all that self loathing. This review, this whatever it is drifts on in to view with the sounds of his “Vt. Ore Floor” from his Long Journey lp, 19seventysix…

“There’s a thousand women…
There’s one in every state…
Sometimes I get the feeling…
That I can’t waaaaiiiiittt, I can’t wait”

What a beauty. So why are we here? I think we’re here for two records and a thousand hopeless reasons.

“I stay with my woman…
Cause she won’t let me die…”

Damn.

Now I’m going to go off and find the first record while I set the other one up downloading from one of these vinyl coupons. After the code it states I AM A BEAUTIFUL ANIMAL! in such a way as to make me say it out loud. Why don’t some labels do this coupon thing yet? Huh? Drag City?

Too late for questions! Charlie Parr and the Black Twig Pickers are stomping the bellows and the flames are tickling heaven and the rafters beyond. It took me a while to find this beautiful animal disc, it wasn’t in any of the cd piles, rather on my bedside table under a couple of books. After one track of sweet dawn filtered through the solo fiddle of the Twigs’ Mike Gangloff we’re off with ‘Deaths Black Train’ and the whole crew are kneedeep in a heavy roots groove. This record floods the fallow land, irrigates my soul.

“better get your house in order!” wails Charlie Parr while fiddle slips and gains out of the left channel like wheels on the rail, harmonica throbs out the right, and Charlie’s resonator rises up on the breeze and dances a heavy jig. The House is shaking. After two and a half minutes of this relentless glory you get a spine tingling dose of something that goes down a number of times on this record. It suddenly feels as heavy as fuck, something gets turned up hot (without and within), they lock in and pounce like a Mountain Lion, the tambourine and foot thuds are like paws on the chest and teeth in the eyes. We’re all hunted, and I’m easy prey to this kind of beast. What a way to go.

‘Old Ark’s a Movin’ comes in fourth place and knocks seven shades out of anything you ever heard on Deadwood you bearded middle class feck… Sorry, carried away there… A whirligig of fiddle, Isak Howell’s exacting steel string (his metronomic picking levitates the whole thing, here and on the Twigs Thrill Jockey debut Ironto Special), Parr’s joyful ice-sliding and Nathan Bowles’ furry banjo keeping the ears warm.

This was going to be another chapter in my records about GOD loved by the Godless series (that began with Hiss Golden Messenger’s Bad Debt) because it’s called Glory in the Meeting House and consists mostly of Gospel songs heavy on the up and down duality thing, plus it has a screen print of a church with the doors flung wide on the cover. But the music is such a visceral experience that it’s hard to care, or at least hard to worry about what I think about it. It’s a welcome break! Speaking of Meeting Houses I went to a Quaker one in the Yorkshire dales, and something of this music was itching to get out of the old oak boards.

Sometimes a lonely brood settles in, Charlie’s voice rustles like fallen leaves, he wishes he “was in heaven sittin’ down… take away my sin and leave me grace, come awnnn Angel, haul my load, I wish I was in heaven sittin’ down”, a mournful choir of Twigs echoing. Not so mournful later on with ‘Light from the Lighthouse’, Charlie teases the spirits out with some quivering, expectant slide and those spirits sing with all their rough wonder, lungs trebling in size with every refrain. This is amongst the most rousing music I have heard on this earth. It is so resolutely human and like the rest of this incredible album it’s built on great playing, absolute integrity and joyful purpose.

The beauty and association of ‘This World Is Not My Home’ pushes my room into touch with the land beyond. A dead man appears, smiling and living. This music is a force for good, I can say that.

Shit, who does track by track reviews? There is not a single song here that doesn’t have some weird and intriguing lick driving the melody deep into the soul; the ecstatic wobble of a prominent jaw harp on ‘Pure Religion’ being the most psychedelically intrusive of the lot… bung, bung, bung, twing… yeaaaahhh…bung, bung, bung, bung… yeah, pure religion, hally loo and all the rest.

Where are we?

Just buy the thing, it’s here. You don’t need to hear it, you need to join souls with it via money and audio equipment that is not connected to a screen. Why is no-one distributing this in the UK? Perhaps I’ll start up!

-- David Morris, Hinter Ground

Glory in the Meeting House - ... as if everyone here joined up after a day's work to call it a day, sip some drink, and pick some spirituals ... (No Depression)

2010-12-13T11:10:04-05:00

Charlie Parr is joined by The Black Twig Pickers for this album of gospel tunes. Complimenting Parr's other releases, as well as albums by The Black Twig Pickers, Glory In The Meeting House has an intimate, but rolicking back-porch feel to it. The album sounds as if everyone here joined up after a day's work to call it a day, sip some drink, and pick some spirituals together. As always, the 'Pickers are in fine form, and led by the miraculous and teriffic Mr. Parr. I picked up Parr's Backslider shortly after hearing Glory In The Meeting House, which features Dave Simonett of Trampled By Turtles. Charlie Parr, Tramped By Turtles, and Black Twig Pickers have released pretty stellar albums this year worthy of my 2010 list, and anyone else's.

-- Chris Mateer, No Depression Top 20

Ironto Special - ... the spirit of true traditional American music. (No Depression)

2010-12-13T11:07:18-05:00

The Black Twig Pickers are a band whose records play like they were recorded on a creaking back porch in a cozily nestled backyard somewhere. And that's not far from the truth. The 'Pickers often record themselves with litte more than microphones, and do not mind capturing misteps while playing the tunes- which I love. I have lately been collecting a stable of acoustic albums that have minimal production and promote the spirit of true traditional American music. And Ironto Special is definitely one of those albums. And as a testament to promoting and insuring this music's survival, the CD and Vinyl LP copies of the album include the music for the tunes and notes on tunings, so you can play the songs yourself and pass them along to other pickers! To me, that's what the tradition of this music is all about. What a great bunch of guys.

-- Chris Mateer, No Depression Top 20

Ironto Special - ... an eeriness that at times has a slightly threatening otherwordly feel ... (American Roots UK)

2010-11-22T16:50:32-05:00

4.5****

            I recently wrote a review of the Black Twig Pickers incredible co-production with Charlie Parr, ‘Glory in the meeting house,’ in which I said that I ‘d just got my copy of ‘Ironto Special’ and was looking forward to playing it. I was immediately struck by it’s infectiously ramshackle feel, to such a degree that it has stopped me from listening to much other new music in the last two to three weeks, in fact there have been a few days when I’ve had it on constant rotation! The three members of this superb band are all highly talented musicians, as they must be to play this acoustic music with any sort of conviction, and yet it is not only their skill, but also an instinctive feel for ‘old time’ music that they have in abundance. The band is made up of Isak Howell, Nathan Bowles and Mike Gangloff who between them play fiddle, guitar, banjo, washboard, jews harp, vocals and various other unidentifiable sounds!
            Their enthusiasm is there for all to hear in every song they play and whilst it is a country mile from ‘easy listening’ it is so easy to listen to that if only this music could get more media (i.e. radio, t.v.) exposure maybe more people would start to realize what they have been missing when watching the ‘X Factor’! I know people that hear one song from an album such as this and then write it off as ‘just yeeehaaaaw music’! If only they would approach these incredible sounds without their preconceived notions perhaps talent rather than promotion would start to win out!
            This recording is made up of mostly traditional songs, the couple of exceptions being band co-writes Smoker wedding march and Craig street hop, both blending in completely seamlessly. Some of the slightly discordant harmonies, such as those in Last payday at Coal Creek add to the almost harsh, edgy beauty of the album. This is ‘real country music’ that is about as far from Nashville as it can get, but because of the individuality expressed is also incredibly powerful and evocative of ‘old time/hillbilly’ music. Even the slower tunes have an incisiveness that makes the album stand out from the crowd of copyists that have cropped up since the advent of films such as O’ brother where art thou and Cold Moutain. This band represent the edgier, truly authentic sound of ‘old time’ music, bringing an eeriness that at times has a slightly threatening otherworldy feel on many of the tracks, similar to the emotions conjured up by the 1972 movie Deliverance! Tunes like Ducks on the pond, Last payday at Coal Creek, Fire on the mountain and the repetitive Old jack Gillie being examples.
            Even a ‘love song’ Saro O Saro is upfront and ‘pushy’ in not only it’s sentiments but also in the performance, with the jews harp forcing its way over the vocals to give an uneasy feeling that all may not be as it seems in the song. Similarly Love my honey I do with its sawing fiddle and vocals that leave no doubt that the singer means every word of the lyrics. You can imagine a local dance in a ‘holler’ of old slowing down for a couple of minutes so that most can catch their breath whilst the band plays Craig street hop for those that still have a little energy left!Finally, Rockin’ in a weary land with its constant ‘thrum’ of a snare in the background and the fiddle fighting it’s way through is evocative of a scene from a march in an American civil war drama where few are expected to return.
            So why didn’t I give the album five stars? I’m not sure, but I think probably because there could have been more vocals! (maybe a double album, or a triple, or …..!) In the end an assessment of any album is instinctive, much like the performance on ‘Ironto special’ by this superb band.

-- American Roots UK

Where You Gonna Be (When the Good Lord Calls You Home)? - The playing is amazing, a window into another world. (Sounds XP)

2010-11-22T16:41:44-05:00

This is a limited single to accompany the joint UK tour by these American country blues artists, who play a mix of original and traditional songs. Minnesota native Parr’s website explains that “Charlie Parr has failed in most things in life” but ‘Where You Gonna Be…’ is a great success; it sounds like an old gospel title but is a Parr original, propelled by the outstanding sound of his resonator guitar. B-side ‘Stepback Cindy’ is very moreish traditional Appalachian dance music from the Black Twig Pickers, Mike Gangloff’s fiddle setting you looking for a partner to do-si-do with as soon as it starts wailing. The playing is amazing, a window into another world.

-- Ged M., Sounds XP

Glory in the Meeting House - It's a masterpiece in what's all good about country/gospel/blues. (You Crazy Dreamers)

2010-11-22T16:37:34-05:00

This album may have escaped the radar somewhat given that both Charlie and The Black Twig Pickers had their own releases out just recently in support of their recent tours but they recorded this back in May and I only came across it because word got to me it was being sold when they toured the UK together for a few shows recently. Thankfully it’s not a ‘only available at live shows’ album and is online both at cd baby and Klang. There is also a limited edition 7″ vinyl you can pick up here too.

An album of rare old gospel covers (apart from Charlie’s Where You Gonna Be (When the Good Lord Calls You Home)? it’s a masterpiece in what’s all good about country/gospel/blues. Charlie has been making waves in the UK for a few years now, he plays end of the road festival every year and is name on most people’s lips come the end, those who knew him before and those that didn’t. This is a perfect match with TBTP being the ideal band for Charlie to play alongside , mixed with a few haunting instrumentals I think the album really comes to life when Charlie’s vocal scream to the heavens especially on There aint no grave gonna hold my body down for when the band kicks in is just spine tingling gospel joy. Buy it.

-- You Crazy Dreamers

Ironto Special - Music that stops you in your tracks is a revelation ... (Freq)

2010-11-17T11:25:08-05:00

Music that stops you in your tracks is a revelation and there’s a clue in the sleeve notes to the selective but universal world this recording inhabits, revels in. A mossy rock somewhere up a mountain trail, overshadowed by its misty Appalachian cousins and yet once stumbled over, no less significant and astounding than the mountain giants that threaten to overshadow it. No less difficult to negotiate than the crags and ridges of a trail; the long musical path Isak Howell, Nathan Bowles and Mike Gangloff re-tread, in order to bring the pay-day stomps, moonshine reels and miner’s wakes of the traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo masters of their adopted home, into the twenty first century.

Blasting in with the whoops and kneeslaps of “Drink Nothing But Corn” and “Last Payday At Coal Creek,” comprising of thirteen oldtime and two new reasons to down tools and join in the wild abandon this music is famous for, via the lament of “Dead Man’s Piece” and the percussive banjo and Celtic lyres of self-penned “Smoker Wedding March”’s proud skip up the isle. “’Fire In The Mountain” handed down through family and friend, demonstrating the value of tradition and “Craig Street Hop” – another original – matching it.

Throughout the disc, frantic fiddle, banjo and ragged vocals plus washboard, bones, fiddlesticks, guitar, mouth n’ jaw harp keep the grog flowing until a lonely snare and Charlie Parr‘s guesting on baritone 12-string finally brings it to a close with a solemn dirge, “Rocking in a Weary Land.” Like the craft displayed in the pencil drawings of the players that grace the notes about each track, executed with study, respect; but also with a one-take, no-overdubs soul. Happy trails.

-Peter Bennett-

Freq

Ironto Special - ... the elusive grail, the moment when the music and the musicians are one and the same ... (The Bluegrass Special)

2010-11-15T17:30:23-05:00

Though not as self-consciously mysterious as the Earl Brothers, Ironto, Virginia’s Black Twig Pickers (chiefly Nathan Bowles, Isak Howell and Mike Gangloff) are equally artful in occupying a place where time stopped around 1930 or 1940, or somewhere in between or thereabouts. They’re no more interested in being pretty or proper than are the Earls, but they do play with the same precision, passion and mystery and create something awesome and wondrous out of the songs of yore, which burst forth from their instruments with grace and intensity alike. The CD comes with a fold-out insert containing Gangloff’s erudite song-by-song notes (as well as tunings for each song) that blend his and his mates’ personal histories with observations on each tune's origins and evolution, with observations about characters they’ve met along the way from whom they have learned valuable lessons (musical and otherwise), and emphasizing the inextricable link between the land they love and the songs they play (“Water only flows out of Floyd County, Va., not into it, and that may be true of music too,” Gangloff writes in introducing the tangled trail of various “Walls of Jericho” incarnations; of “Ducks On the Pond,” he writes: “The landmarks that define the West Virginia-Virginia line at Glen Lyn are Appalachian Power’s coal-fired plant on the banks of the New River, and the cryptic and gorgeous fiddling of one-time power plant worker Henry Reed, who was fired for supporting the union.”) The Black Twig Pickers’ music is not so much earthy as it is of the earth. You may think you have heard this or that group sounding like the Pickers, but you haven’t—beyond the elegant, synergistic instrumental conversations they have with each other, beyond the old-timey ethos, these fellows have an energy about them, a glow, that comes from surrendering themselves completely to the moment they are making music together. What they do is nigh on to indescribable, so organic and soulful is it. Music without guile, music with a heart to match the beauty of the Appalachians the Pickers call home. What was it God said to Moses? “I am that I am”? Well, the Black Twig Pickers are what they are.

Well, maybe we’re getting a bit far afield here. However, you don’t have to believe the group is divinely anointed in order to be swept away by its jubilant attack on songs new and old. A song such as “Last Payday at Coal Creek” is, as Gangloff says in his notes, at least a century old but also “a song for recent times, definitely,” and in the hoarse, ragged vocal and roaring ensemble sprint spurred by Bowles’s intense banjo picking you hear the undercurrent of desperation fueling the anxious ambiance. On a lighter note, a Pickers’ original tune, “Smoker Wedding March,” written a few years ago for a friend’s wedding, is a simply, joyous fiddle-and-chopsticks piece. Yes, fiddle and chopsticks, with Bowles tickling the strings of Gangloff’s fiddle with recurring glissando riffs as the latter bows a bright, buoyant melody. On the rhythmic juggernaut that is “Fire On The Mountain” (a tune handed down from the Pine River Boys and its superb fiddler, Walter Morris), the musicians march relentlessly ahead with such exuberance as to elicit whoops and hollers audible on the track as Gangloff tears into the ebullient melody and Bowles adds to the mix the infectious clatter of a washboard. Going out on a high note, the Pickers offer a song of truly ancient derivation, “Rocking In a Weary Land,” described by Gangloff in his notes as a “creaky fiddle tune” (and he proceeds to wrench the melody out of his own laboring instrument), but one which also benefits from the spooky atmospherics infusing its hymn-like mood courtesy the low moan of Charlie Parr’s baritone resonator 12-string guitar. Only on the surface do the Black Twig Pickers sound like any other band. What lies beneath the music but is revealed in the expressive discourse among the players is the elusive grail, the ethereal moment when the music and the musicians are one and the same, inseparable and inviolate, world without end. Amen.

-- David McGee, The Bluegrass Special

Ironto Special - ... steeping themselves in history doesn't dampen the impact of the music -- it magnifies it. (Pitchfork)

2010-11-10T10:09:14-05:00

Is there a good name for the music of the Appalachias? Bluegrass grows more in the foothills, folk is too broad, string-band too restrictive, and old-timey implies a deep disconnection from the present. In the extensive liner notes to their second album, the Black Twig Pickers wisely avoid any of these terms. The music is simply music, as much a part of the here-and-now as anything else in Virginia and West Virginia. The band, who backed Jack Rose on an album last year, remain academic-minded, proudly apprenticing themselves to older musicians from the region. In those liners, band member Mike Gangloff recounts the provenance of some of the old songs they play as well as the geneses of their two originals, hinting that the past hangs over the band just by virtue of the style of music they play.

Yet, for the Black Twig Pickers steeping themselves in history doesn't dampen the impact of the music-- it magnifies it. Ironto Special is no dry, studious affair: Named after a mountain town in southwest Virginia, the album is raw and boisterous, sometimes showy and sometimes restrained but always spirited in its execution. The trio may not be the most dexterous pickers, but they wisely emphasize energy over exactness, whether they're playing a barnburner like "Don't Drink Nothing But Corn" or a slower number like "Smoker Wedding March". If you listen carefully, you might hear a flub or two, but that only contributes to the ramshackle vibe of the album.

From the almost spry bounce of "Pickin' Out the Devil's Eyes" to the military processional of "Rockin' in a Weary Land", the Pickers play a range of settings, showing how diverse the region and its traditions can be. Then they add a few touches of their own: Nathan Bowles plays the bones on "Dead Man's Piece", and the simple rhythms offsets the froggy harmonica and spare banjo, as if ticking off the minutes of a life. That, Gangloff writes in the liners, is a funeral song, and it's followed by a wedding march, creating the album's best sequence. While he bows a springtime reel on "Smoker Wedding March", Bowles drums on the fiddle strings with chopsticks.

Much of Ironto Special is instrumental, highlighting the close interplay between the guitars, banjos, washboards, and mouth harps. Oddly, the only instrument that doesn't seem to belong is the human voice. The Pickers trade off vocals on just a few songs and whoop and holler on others. Isak Howell fares best on "Lay Ten Dollars Down", his phrasing suggestive of a drunken stagger, but in general, they all sound like they're straining toward some tumbledown genre ideal rather than letting it come as naturally as the rest of the music. In general, though, the Pickers show a firm and confident grasp of the traditions they're participating in and-- more importantly-- of the relevance of this unnamed genre to the present-day.

— Stephen M. Deusner, November 10, 201, Pitchfork

Ironto Special - ... as genuine old-time as Uncle Dave Macon and yet are available by digital download ... (Country Standard Time)

2010-11-08T11:55:46-05:00

We enter a new era. The Black Twig Pickers are as genuine old-time as Uncle Dave Macon and yet are available by digital download or limited edition LP via their Chicago-based record label. The Pickers, who play dances in Southwest Virginia and tour Europe, are old time fiddle, frailing banjo, jugs and washboards, jaws harps and spoons. They are square dances and moonshine and front porch sessions on log cabins in mountain hollers, yet accessible on the Internet.

Some of the tunes are familiar and some are new; all sound old. Just when you wonder if timeless art forms might be lost, modern technology allows them to solider on. The Black Twig Picker's sound is as old as the Appalachians, but will be new to many modern people. If you are of Scottish-Irish, African American, or any cultural heritage with roots in traditional music and you want to know where your music came from, these guys are worth the time to study.

The Pickers are old-fashioned, but technically proficient. They are authentic old-time, yet their sound is preserved with modern techniques in modern studios. They are new-fangled youthful contradiction, but as real as grandpa's music back home.

-- Dr. Bobby Jones, Country Standard Time

Glory in the Meeting House - Charlie Parr is a true master of this music and I suspect that the Black Twig Pickers will turn out to be the same. (American Roots UK)

2010-10-25T15:19:31-04:00

2010 – House of Mercy Recordings

4.5****

            The threads of many of these songs go back at least a couple of centuries, despite various musicians changing and adapting them to suit their own particular set of needs. Fairly obviously we will never know what the originals sounded like and yet I don’t think they would or could have sounded much different to the versions on this incredible album! The album helps to define where ‘old-time’ (or ‘hillbilly’) music and the ‘blues’ were in the days before commerce and the recording industry took over and separated them for ever. Whilst the songs are predominately on the gospel side of blues, the history books tell us that there was very little difference between the music played by the poor black people and the poor whites; in fact many of the early ‘old-time’ players actually got started by being taught songs and how to play their instruments by black men steeped in their version of folk music (i.e. the blues or ‘Race music’ as it was known then). The untutored rasping vocals of Charlie Parr are evocative of the days when people played music in the villages and farms of the Appalachians purely for their own and their neighbours pleasure, after all, music was their only escape from the grinding poverty that they found themselves in. Basically the feel of the music was far more important than ‘perfect pitch’ so anyone could play regardless of talent.
           Charlie Parr is a master of Banjo and National steel resonator guitar, added to which is his rasping full of character vocals, whilst the Twig Pickers who are made up of Isak Howell, Nathan Bowles and Mike Gangloff between them play fiddle, guitar, banjo, washboard and of course vocals. There are several instrumentals, such as the opening track, the traditional, eerie fiddle tune Glory in the meeting house and the beautifully played resonator guitar on the also traditional What a friend we have in Jesus. There is the glorious classic stringband tune of Old ark’s a-movin’ and the front porch, old-time evoking fiddle tune of I’m going home. Some great instrumentals, but the songs are as good with Charlie dragging every drop of feeling out of his straining vocals to give all of these mainly traditional tunes the respect and atmosphere they deserve. The Rev. J. M. Gates scary Death’s black train is probably as frightening as the Reverend himself intended it to be, with the sinister sounding fiddle, harmonica, jews harp and national resonator driving the song along. I wish I was in heavan sitting down Is mainly just Charlie and his resonator and has the harrowing sound of a man broken by the struggles in this life and longing for his place in heavan. Every song is played as if they really mean it, which, indeed they do. This is classic old time string band music that was actually recorded in a shed in Ironto, Virginia early this year.
            A tremendous album that opens the door a little to give us an authentic sounding sample of where these songs were at the dawn of the commercial recording age in the early twentieth century, but without all the crackles and pops! Charlie is a true master of this music and I suspect that the Black Twig Pickers will turn out to be the same. It is no coincidence that the title of the Twig Pickers new album is ‘Ironto special’. (see above) I’ve just got my copy and am about to play it, so all I need now is for my copy of Charlies new album ‘When the Devil goes blind’ to arrive and they should keep me happy for a few days at least! If you have any interest at all in hearing where ‘country music/blues/gospel’ came from buy this album; you won’t regret it.

-- American Roots UK

Ironto Special - Come on America, let's get back to community... Screw 'Dancing with the Stars!' (Work & Worry)

2010-10-22T10:18:38-04:00

American music is alive and well with the release of the Black Twig Picker’s latest, Ironto Special, out now on Thrill Jockey Records. For me, the Black Twigs (Mike Gangloff, Isak Howell, and Nathan Bowles) are an important part of what keeps real American music alive and vital… in an age that seems to proliferate possibly the most soulless and mechanical music ever created (can you even call it music?) these guys wield their gritty musical axe, standing tall in today’s musical landscape.

Following closely on the heels of their last record, the essential Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers, Ironto Special saws, stomps and swings, and the trio, armed with fiddle, banjo, washboard, bones, and voices, serve up some damn hot numbers. Though the playlist mostly showcases traditional Appalachian tunes, the disc also features two kickin’ originals, “Smoker Wedding March” and “Craig Street Hop”. Sound-wise, the Black Twigs are rooted firmly, both musically and geographically, in Southern Appalachia, between Galax (Southwest Virginia) and Round Peak region in North Carolina (near Mount Airy). At times, though, their musical roots also steep just a bit north, heading up into central West Virginia, showing the influences of Tom Carter and Blanton Owens.

Being a huge fan of the banjo, I’m drawn to their recording of “Dead Man’s Piece”. ”Craig Street Hop”, “Ducks on the Pond”, and “Bonaparte’s March into Russia” are also other highlights. ”Walls of Jericho”, a tune by Sam McNiel of Floyd County, Virginia, also stands out in an arrangement for solo fiddle by Gangloff.

With Ironto Special, The Black Twig Picker’s keep the home fires burning, giving life’s blood to the living tradition that is American music…and long may they do so! I’m completely serious when I say “Come on America, lets get back to community… Screw “Dancing with the Stars!” Grab some Black Twigs records (or better yet, call em up and organize a show) and start dancin’ in barns, homes and grange halls again!

-- Buck Curran, Work & Worry

Ironto Special - The Black Twig Pickers ... are just 80 years behind the times. (fRoots)

2010-10-20T23:07:52-04:00

I am reminded of the late John Fahey who more than once in his early years hid behind a pseudonym so folk might think they were listening to a long lost bluesman from the past. Add surface noise to this CD and you could be listening to any of the string bands from the 1920s and '30s, when old-time country music had a regional identity and personality that records were able to capture. The Black Twig Pickers, from South West Virginia, are just 80 years behind the times. The trio sharing fiddle, banjo, guitar, jaw's harp and other miscellaneous percussion instruments, plus the odd vocal, work their way through 15 songs and tunes, all but two of which are culled from the rich heritage of Appalachian music. Unless you read the notes, no one would be able to detect that two of the tunes are originals, the superb Smoker Wedding March with cross-tuned fiddle played with bow and chopsticks, and a fiddle and banjo gem Craig Street Hop.

The trick in replicating old-time music is not to be seduced by the quality of modern recording to make every instrument separate, clear and highly compressed, and these guys recorded one take live and produced a finished sound that is as pure as the music they play. The other trick, or talent if you will, is not to be mannered or self conscious with the singing and their vocals are just the right shade of roughness. Only Fire on the Mountain leaps out as a well-known tune, and even this has a unique arrangement. Wonderful to be able to add this to the many CDs of reissued old-time fiddle music classics and not be able to detect a join.

-- John Atkins, fRoots

Ironto Special - ... hold on to earth, mountain earth that I will one day return to, I hope. (Freq)

2010-10-06T13:19:54-04:00

The Vortex Jazz Bar, London
27 September 2010

My view of this evening is tainted in about 200 different ways and as I haven’t drafted this review I don’t know what you’ll make of it but hang on a minute. I have to explain that when I was younger and more energetic and had more brain power with which to be creative I did used to review music; but after awhile I became bored of my own observations and felt I was often saying the same thing in an emotional way and not really reaching any points of information for the target audiences desiring the over analysis of technical something or anothers. To me writing reviews is work.

This gig is being held in Dalston, a place that despite its recent upturn in hipster popularity remains to me a smelly, dirty, dangerous and ugly no-go area. I have a deep running prejudice against Dalston which I don’t intend to ever give up, which started when I first came to London and which proves its own validity (to me anyway) over and over with unerring consistency. I know you all love Dalston, so I won’t bother you with why – but understand I don’t and won’t like it. It’s spitting rain on me, so it was with a stonewalled heart that I trudged down to Gillett Sqare and observed what looked to me a lot like the bad parts in William Gibson novels to wait for the Vortex to decide to open its doors. I was promised me mountain music (I come from the western North Carolina Smoky Mountains) though, so I thought I’d better behave and give it a go.

To accommodate my bad mood I feel quite cross at the audience. They are all so London, too old to be the Dalston hipsters but obviously really wishing they were. The Vortex has set up their cramped little tables in such a way as to say, “there ain’t going to be no dancing;” in fact you may not even have room to get up and go to the bar. Everyone is too close and I cringe constantly at the conversations around me, apart from one fellow American girl who’s saying she’s about to move to Tennessee. I envy her. After about an hour of abject boredom, The Black Twig Pickers take the stage and not a moment too soon. The fiddle gives me a little false hope of transporting to memoryland, and I unclench my teeth right away.

You see when I was a girl, and a teenager and later a crappy young adult and even now that I’m ageing, this music has been in my life. Sure these guys are from Copper Hill, Virginia, but it’s still the Blue Ridge, same as mine and their traditional songs are what I’ve heard most of my life. My most vivid and pleasant memories are from summer days, something like 4th of July picnics or someone’s birthday party; rare occasions when for whatever reason I have been in attendance at a gig sounding just like this. It’s smoky and smells of barbecue sauce and beer and the heat of it all is constant. There are kids screeching and feet stomping and me, nearly hiding to watch – and listen – lost in a private sort of reverie I didn’t really quite understand but knowing I wanted that sound to continue forever. It usually included some invocations of Jesus, or at rare parts just the banishing of Him. I would sneak away and try to make myself as small as possible and invisible so nobody would bother me. So that I could stay in my own private world of that sultry fiddle and guitar union, so I could sing along with the irreverent and dark (even the ones about Jesus) words. So that I could dig my toes into the dust and hold on to earth, mountain earth that I will one day return to, I hope.

So this London audience: they made no move to find their feet but clapped with quiet embarrassment, nodded their heads and smiled knowingly. They were proud to be at something which would be the talk of the hipsters this season, hopeful to join in a quest for roots music and authentic instrumentation and harmonic playing. The Black Twig Pickers gave it to them in kind without shame for the mistakes and the re-tuning. These are real aspects of mountain music, for if you are going to play at speed the reels and even the waltzes of fine afternoon hoedowns you are going to drop a string to a wrong key, your voice is going to crack and you are going to have to consistently pull back together to keep up with the twangs. I felt these guys were very good at reverse hospitality, making themselves completely at home in this alien environment so far away from home. They were clearly unconcerned with all the things that were making me edgy, but try as I did I could not escape the distraction and I could not lose myself in my familiarities. When Nathan Bowles, the main banjo picker got out fiddle sticks to accompany Mike Gangloff on the fiddle I nearly cried not having seen such done in more than 30 years. But even that couldn’t get me the hell out of Dalstonrage.

What I had to admit finally was that they were just too good, too real. I was being ornery and spiteful and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. What finally eclipsed my grumpy outlook was a deep seeded homesickness which The Black Twig Pickers evoked in me. I completely failed to enjoy this show because of my own lonely sickness of the heart which only comes when a person has been too long away from home. Me and everybody ever born in the Smoky Mountains have an attachment that the rest of the world may not be able to fathom. For the very granite that make up our dear mountains and the sap that binds the pines to earth, for the music that echoes the whipoorwills and the purity of the mountain songs – the band have packed it up in cases and delivered it in the most unlikely place and nearly driven me to home.

I recommend you take a look at this band, I believe they have a record out called Ironto Special. If you are at all from my lands you will understand immediately.

-MF-

FREQ

Ironto Special - ... some of the best old-timey music around. (Magnet)

2010-10-04T11:11:29-04:00

While it might not be crackly, dusty and hillbilly enough for hardcore traditionalists like Joe Bussard, Ironto, Va.’s Black Twig Pickers are creating some of the best old-timey music around. When they’re not gigging overseas—the trio of Isak Howell, Nathan Bowles and Mike Gangloff are just off a U.K. tour—they have a monthly gig picking tunes at a community-wide bluegrass dance held at the local Floyd Country Store—and occasionally in old moonshine cellars deep in the mountains of Blacksburg. Following their stellar 2009 collaboration with late guitar master Jack Rose, the Black Twig Pickers have just released Ironto Special (Thrill Jockey). “Don’t Drink Nothing But Corn,” the first single from the album (which features 13 renditions of traditional Appalachian songs and two original pieces), is a whooping, grain-alcohol-fueled banjo, guitar and fiddle stomp that’ll make you want to immediately hop a freight down to the Floyd Country Store.

-- Magnet

Ironto Special - ... traditionalism that's never creaky ... (Dusty Groove)

2010-10-01T16:05:36-04:00

Ramshackle old time roots music from The Black Twig Pickers of Southwest Virginia – banjo, guitar, washboard, mouth harp, fiddle and snare drum and bones – recorded live with no overdubs! It's the kind of unfussy, southern American folk & roots music traditionalism that's never creaky or dusty when strummed, picked and thumped in the right hands, as it is with the Black Twig Pickers. It ain't lacking for passion, either! Titles include "Don't Drink Nothing But Corn", "Last Payday At Coal Creek", "Ducks On The Pond", "Fire On The Mountain", "Pickin; Out The Devil's Eyes:, "Walls Of Jericho", "Rockin' In A Weary Land" and more.

-- Dusty Groove

Ironto Special - ... alive, raw, and timeless ... (The Velvet Rut)

2010-10-01T15:58:54-04:00

Old-time. Mountain music. The beating heart of Appalachia. There's a story in every song and there's a story behind every song. Old-time. Don't take it to mean that this music is the soundtrack to some museum piece set behind a glass enclosure to remind of us bygone days. And this isn't the music of revivalists because that would imply that the sounds of fiery fiddles and claw-hammer banjos were once forgotten or lost and they have now returned. Old-time is more than a reference to a sound so that we can neatly identify its place in a list of genres. In the hands of the Southwest Virginian trio The Black Twig Pickers old-time is as it always has been...alive, raw, and timeless...a recorded piece of a people and place whose stories are as real today as they were in all generations past.

The Black Twig Pickers are set to release their latest record, Ironto Special, on Tuesday, September 21st via Thrill Jockey Records [the Chicago-based indie label whose roster of artists includes Califone, The Fiery Furnaces, and Future Islands]. The 15-track Ironto Special was recorded entirely in first takes [with the absence of any overduds] at the Shred Shed in Ironto, Virginia throughout 2009. The Black Twig Pickers are currently in the midst of a month long tour of the UK [which includes a number of dates performing with Charlie Parr!!]. You can find a complete list of tour dates HERE. "Don't Drink Nothing But Corn" is the lead-off track from the band's upcoming release.

-- The Velvet Rut

Ironto Special - ... this is music that vigorously avoids gentrification. (Uncut)

2010-09-29T16:07:24-04:00

There’s something a little daunting about writing on the subject of the Black Twig Pickers: an awareness, I guess, that I’m dealing with a world of knowledge and experience that comically exceeds my own. There’s a quote on their website which reads innocuously enough: “Exciting old-time music at its finest.” But it comes from some evidently specialist publication called Bluegrass Unlimited: the Black Twigs might attract dabblers in old-time music, but they privilege, understandably, those who know what they’re talking about.

The thing is, the Black Twig Pickers move in places where a bunch of neophytes may well come into contact with their excellent music. Back home in South West Virginia, they play presumably fairly wild dances. Tonight, though, they’re playing a hushed and genteel jazz club in Dalston, and their new album, “Ironto Special” is out on Thrill Jockey - a terrific and varied label, but not one which has been home to that many deep roots artists.

One exception, of course, is the late Jack Rose, and I assume the Black Twigs came onto Thrill Jockey’s radar thanks to their long association with Rose: both from a shared past in drone outfit Pelt, and as bandmates on the great “Jack Rose And The Black Twig Pickers” disc of a year or so back. Guitarist Charlie Parr has been sitting in with them on some recent gigs, but for this show, the band are down to their core trio: Mike Gangloff, a genial scholar and host who mainly plays fiddle; Isak Howell, a guitarist who provides nimble shunting rhythms rather than leads; and Nathan Bowles, a banjo player with washboard, bones and, intriguingly, fiddlesticks.

It’s a mark of my ignorance that I didn’t actually know what fiddlesticks were until I see Bowles drum on the neck of Gangloff’s fiddle with them. Describing “Smoker Wedding March” in the invaluable sleevenotes to “Ironto Special”, Gangloff writes, “Nathan takes a set of chopsticks to strings I’m not bowing. My fiddles are long-suffering.”

The sound, though, on this and “Love My Honey I Do” is extraordinarily delicate, even harplike. It’s a contrast with the bowing tone of Gangloff’s fiddle, a deliberately harsh sound which gives the Black Twigs a real rawness, a sense that this is music which vigorously avoids gentrification.

It’s also incredibly specific music. Over two longish, compelling sets, Gangloff talks a lot about the local music and musicians of their South-West Virginian neighbourhood, pointing up micro-scenes within the area: the second set features a run of what he calls Copper Hills tunes, curious, he notes, for the fact that their titles – “Never Miss Your Mother ‘Til She’s Gone”, for example – are more or less the only lyrics in the incredible versions.

By the end of the session, it feels like you’ve been inducted in an ancient culture by a trio of good-time missionaries – three musicians who only stop, it seems, when the audience stops making requests – for waltzes rather than specific songs, quaintly – and starts thinning out, prey to the whims of public transport. Given any opportunity, I suspect the Black Twig Pickers would play all night. There would be worse ordeals.

-- John Mulvey, Uncut

Ironto Special - Beautifully hand-rendered, Old Weird America folk. (Uncut)

2010-09-29T16:02:00-04:00

Beautifully hand-rendered, Old Weird America folk.

Part of a gang of Virginian musicians -- including Pelt, Spiral Joy Band, and the late, great Jack Rose -- who cross drone and psychedelia with folk and blues modes, The Black Twig Pickers are the traditionalists of the scene, whittling away at an increasingly idiosyncratic vision of old-timey music. They're good at loose, rangy porch-front jams but really excel when reeling out lone melodies on fiddle, as on "Walls Of Jericho" and "Ducks On The Pond." Think The Anthology of American Folk Music upholstered for the 21st century.

-- Jon Dale, Uncut

Ironto Special - ... a joyful celebration of a living, breathing musical form. (The Line of Best Fit)

2010-09-29T15:36:15-04:00

Named after the Virginian town in which it was recorded, Ironto Special marks The Black Twig Pickers first release for their new label Thrill Jockey. Following on from last years album with Jack Rose (Jack Rose and The Black Twig Pickers), the album sees the band continue in their fine vein of form. The 15 tracks here were all recorded in single takes with no overdubs and capture a band who are masters at their chosen discipline. Although there are two original songs on the record, the majority of the album is made up from songs that have been learnt by the band through study with local old-time musicians and various field recordings from the region. The result is an album that both celebrates old time Appalachian traditions and adds to them-passing the traditions and songs on to the next generation. It’s a joyful and uplifting sound. Built up around layers of claw-hammer banjo, washboard, guitar and scratching fiddle there are plenty of additional harmonica, Jaws harp, bones and hollers thrown in for good measure. There’s even a guest appearance from frequent touring partner Charlie Parr who contributes 12 String Baritone Resonator ( a one of a kind instrument) to album closer ‘Rocking in a Weary Land’, a song built upon a marching drum and looping and insistent drones.

It is unlikely that Ironto Special‘s old-time sound will appeal to all TLOBF readers. But then that isn’t really the point: if you allow yourself a minute to listen to the whoops and hollers of ‘Bonaparte’s March into Russia’,'Old Jack Gillie’, or the scratching fiddle of ‘Love My Honey I Do’ you begin to realise that Ironto Special is less of an album and more a joyful celebration of a living, breathing musical form. While there may be a place for the Frank Fairfields and C.W Stonekings of this world, who seem to re-enact the music they produce and play some kind of character, with the The Black Twig Pickers the focus lies solely on sonic revelry rather than any kind of nostalgia or reverence for days gone by. Be it the frenzied scraping of the fiddle, the whirling banjo lines or the insistent chug of the guitar, there is an entrancing fervor to the playing on Ironto Special that makes it a record that is easy to lose yourself in.

-- The Line of Best Fit

Ironto Special - ... a reminder that concepts of traditional versus contemporary ultimately become arbitrary and meaningless ... (Whisperinandhollerin)

2010-09-29T11:20:46-04:00

Our Rating:

This band take their name from a popular Tennessee variety of apple first introduced as a seedling in 1830. Black Twig apples have a taste that is both sweet and tart and, if stored correctly, get better the longer you keep them.

Old time Appalachian folk music is also something that improves with age. Far from being the kind of aural history housed in museum vaults, it is a vibrant and living music passed from one generation which, if preserved well, never loses its power.

Black Twig Pickers are well aware that there is no need for any modern studio techniques to communicate the power of these (mostly) traditional songs. All the tracks here, recorded in Ironto, Virginia, are single takes with no overdubs. The all acoustic instrumentation by the trio of Nathan Bowles, Isak Howell and Mike Gangloff includes fiddles, clawhammer banjo, washboard, bones, fiddlesticks, mouth harp + jaw harp.

A marching drum on the closing track (Rockin' In A Weary Land) is the only percussion on the record. This song is also the one with faint traces of the droning fiddle that invites comparison between the tunes here and the more experimental pieces that Gangloff (and sometimes Howell) play as part of other group projects Pelt and Spiral Joy Band.

This is Black Twig Pickers first album for Thrill Jockey; their previous four releases are on the VHF label where you will also find the fine album they made with the late great Jack Rose in 2009.

Of the fifteen tracks, only four feature vocals, so long as you discount the yelps on the hoedown numbers. It is hard to pick out individual tracks as they are all special in their own right. My personal favourite, though, is Pickin' Out The Devil's Eyes which in just two minutes encapsulates the energy rush and sheer vibrancy of their playing. The title also seems apt in that it suggests a defiance of mortality whilst never losing sight of the fact that in the midst of life we are in death.

To label Black Twig Pickers as old timey is not wrong but risks missing how this is music bridges an imaginary divide separating old and new weird America. This is music that originates from a specific time and place but it is not confined to temporal or geographical boundaries. It serves as a reminder that concepts of traditional versus contemporary ultimately become arbitrary and meaningless distinctions.

Great music like this is truly timeless.

-- Martin Reybould

Whisperinandhollerin

Ironto Special - ...classic hill country music, delivered with love and precision ... (Foxy Digitalis)

2010-09-29T10:48:01-04:00

About a dozen Appalachian classics and two originals mix it up on “Ironto Special.” While the adept musicians of Black Twig Pickers clearly revere these old songs of daily life, daily struggle, and nightly relief from struggle, they are also astute enough to have fun, knowing that the enduring power of these tunes comes in their simple, true stories, the ones we all share, stripped of the particulars of our time.

Recorded in Ironto Virginia, all the songs on “Ironto Special” were done in one take, and that assured feel is evident throughout; these are lived-in songs, and the instrumentation, from jaw-harp to washboard to banjo, deliver warmth and soul.

The lo-fi grind, Jew’s harp stumble of “Saro O Saro” has causal power; “Rockin’ In a Weary Land” offers martial drums, funeral march pace, bringing an old gospel warhorse feel. The boozy, lovable shuffle of “Lay Ten Dollars Down” also has some of the best lyrics of the set. The real worn and lived-in songs, like “Fire on the Mountain,” “Walls of Jericho,” and “Picking out the Devil’s Eyes,” are given energetic readings that betray their having been given many a spin by the band on stage.

“Ironto Special” is classic hill country music, delivered with love and precision by Black Twig Pickers. There are no surprises here in instrumentation (okay, someone plays bones on a couple songs) or arrangements, but who cares? Music as mainlined from the heart such as this doesn’t need to more to attract attention to itself.

-- Foxy Digitalis

Ironto Special - ...making their antique material current and vibrant. (Boomkat)

2010-09-29T10:41:17-04:00

Appalachian folk maestros and erstwhile bandmates with Jack Rose, The Black Twig Pickers return with a new album for Thrill Jockey (their first release for the label), recorded last year in the Virginian town of the title. As far as Americana goes, these guys are just about as authentic and on-the-money as it gets, romping through traditional regional songs (with a couple of originals thrown in) with an all-acoustic instrumental set-up that supplements a bedrock of banjo, fiddle and guitars with washboards, bones, fiddlesticks and jaw harp. Possibly the band's greatest coup is making their antique material current and vibrant; nothing about this fifteen-song selection sounds like it belongs to a defunct or expired artform. Recorded in single takes with no overdubs, Ironto Special is a joyous listen, performed by terrific musicians who clearly have a scholarly grasp on their cultural heritage.

-- Boomkat

Ironto Special - ... old-time music isn't just a quaint old thing but part of the fabric of their everyday lives... (Dusted)

2010-09-29T10:38:50-04:00

Given that the last record this western Virginia combo made was with their soon-to-depart pal Jack Rose, it’d be awfully easy to hear it through a cheesecloth veil of sentimentality; easy, and wrong. The Black Twig Pickers don’t want your tears, they want to hear your dancing shoes clomping on the floorboards, and you’ll only be doing yourself a favor if you oblige. Depending on your tastes, Ironto Special might even nose out Jack Rose & The Black Twig Pickers. It lacks Rose’s virtuoso turns, but it’s better recorded, with a woody depth to match their enduring steel-string ring, and their playing benefits from the three-dimensional representation.

Nathan Bowles, who previously stuck mostly to washboard and bones, has developed his clawhammer banjo technique to the point where Mike Gangloff plays more fiddle than banjo. The bright strikes of their picks on planks and bow on strings rings out over Isak Howell’s briskly strummed guitar; the breadth of their sound feels as big as a dance hall, and the certitude of rhythms indicates that their monthly booking at the Floyd Country Store’s Friday night dance is an act of good sense, not mercy.

The Twigs may have gotten better at playing and recording, but they haven’t gotten too slick. The record is split between instrumentals, both band originals and well-loved traditionals like “Bonaparte’s March Into Russia,” and songs that all three guys holler out with plenty of exuberance and a minimum of polish. Everything on this record was recorded live in a shed where the Black Twigs have been playing for years, and the performances exude a casual confidence. This music feels lived-in, and like a part of life.

Rose’s work with the Twigs grew out of his relationship with Gangloff; they’d played together in Pelt since the early ’90s. But it also reflects the Twigs’ practice of playing with all comers, from visiting pals like Charlie Parr, who contributes resonator 12-string guitar to one track here, to Clayton Hall, the uncle of former Twig Ralph Berrier and a man who played with people who have played this music since before WWII.

The Black Twig Pickers are part of a real community. It’s one for which old time music isn’t just a quaint old thing but part of the fabric of their everyday lives, be they long-time practitioners or unrepentant punks who haven’t thrown out their Minutemen t-shirts.

By Bill Meyer

Dusted

Midnight Has Come And Gone - Appalachian party-starters ... (Boomkat)

2010-04-29T09:29:16-04:00

Appalachian party-starters The Black Twig Pickers fire up their immensely likable brand of bluegrass and American roots music on the VHF label, working their way through such timeless standards as 'In The Pines' whilst unveiling plenty of original compositions all cast in an authentic country-blues mold. There are plenty of hip young Americana revivalists out there, but credit is due to The Black Twig Pickers for their finely honed harmonising skills and all-round instrumental abilities. This is authentic and historically resonant in the same way that Charlie Parr's recordings tend to be, although on occasion more modern blues influences creep into the mix, referencing something approaching country-rock on the wonderful 'Bent Mountain Drag'.

-- Boomkat

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - After settling down into his fold-up chair, Nathan Bowles convinces a receptive crowd to conquer their shyness and come closer to the stage. (The Skinny)

2009-12-04T12:34:12-05:00

After settling down into his fold-up chair, Nathan Bowles convinces a receptive crowd to conquer their shyness and come closer to the stage. Seated alongside fellow twig picker Mike Gangloff and solo guitar maverick Jack Rose (both of Virginia drone-sorcerers Pelt), the trio blast-off on their longest piece of the evening, a whirling tornado of clawhammer banjo, fiddle and six-string acoustic. This scenario may seem familiar to many diehards in attendance, but there is something altogether different about the trio’s studied and earnest approach to back porch hillbilly blues. By continually rotating between a slew of arcane instruments (washboard, bones, jaw harp, lap slide) during the performance, these American primitives barnstorm their way through an awe-inspiring set of country spirituals, ragtime ragas and old-time stompers. Alternate tunings prove the boys are deliberate folklorists, rare and raw practitioners who have been bestowed with the gift of fostering a musical/oral tradition that will continue for generations.

-- Eric Ledford, The Skinny

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... the kind of lively, unself-conscious simplicity too often in short supply amid the haste and clutter of modern living. (Mojo)

2009-11-18T19:12:30-05:00

Pelt players Jack Rose and Mike Gangloff rummage in USA's folk music
history.

Sounding for all the world like a time capsule recording from early 20th
century America, this eponymous hook up between Jack Rose and Virginian
trio The Black Twig Pickers has such unadorned authenticity you can
almost hear needle scratching shellac as it spins and reels. Combining
easy-rolling instrumentals with foot-stomping dance tunes, this is an
old-time hoedown of a record woven from rough-cut constituents: steel
guitars, see-saw fiddles, country, folk, and bluegrass styles. Having
four pairs of hands and feet sunk deep in their musical heritage, old
friends Rose, Gangloff, Isak Howell and Nate Bowles rekindle the
campfire flames of an era past with the kind of lively, unself-conscious
simplicity too often in short supply amid the haste and clutter of
modern living.

-- Andrew Carden
Mojo

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - it’s hillbilly, it’s ragtime, it’s bluegrass, it’s rhythm, it’s blues, it’s the greatest bar-band you ever heard. (Cows are Just Food)

2009-11-10T13:50:42-05:00

alrighty, lets see if can get through this without resorting to the bog-standard hootin’ an’ a hollerin’ hard drinkin’ foot-stompin’ old fashioned yee-haw hoedown clichés or yawning on about dusty western vistas that writerly types resort to when spunking out words on this kindof thing. i’m using every last ‘g’ motherlovers and i don’t give a flying fucking fiddlestick who knows it.

yes indeedy, jack’s back with the appalachian crazy horse in tow again. i like what they do to him, in the same way crazy horse up mr neil young’s game. but this ain’t no backing band. it’s a proper collaboration. there’s a crazy balancing act going on, see-sawing and swinging around back and forth between jack rose’s takoma blues rags and the black twigs’ old-time swagger.

it’s a deliciously raw record, and the most hellfire rocking since the seven incher he recorded with the twigs last year (which is incidentally one of my all-time favourite pieces of tiny vinyl).

what i dig most about their work is: a) that they’re not in the thrall of the traditional, they’re not folkster academics engaged in some intellectual exercise, they’re not afraid to shake shit up and b) that they’re not a buncha nu-folk popsters or psyched out noisesters. it’s proper goddam traditional music but it ain’t looking to the past, or to the future. it’s the here and now and in the (and of the) bloody moment.

so eleven tracks. thirty eight minutes. singing (yup, actual singing), fiddle, banjo, harmonica, washboard, bones (bones?!?), slide and six string shenanigans.

the spontaneity comes across. it sounds like they’re playing in the next room, it sounds like they had one go at it and sure as buggery better make it count, it sounds like a band who’ve been honing their shit on the road for an age. razor sharp but loose as hell. probably helps that rose and gangloff worked together in pelt. so they de(re)construct bright sunny south from those heady times and give kensington blues a full band re-jig in amongst the standards.

and when all’s said and done, i love a song about murder you can dance to.

it’s hillbilly, it’s ragtime, it’s bluegrass, it’s rhythm, it’s blues, it’s the greatest bar-band you ever heard. it is whatever the fuck it is. and it is a joy from start to finish. good work fellas. see you in stereo!

-- Cows are Just Food

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... raw without courting a faux primitivism (Be Independent)

2009-10-19T15:04:32-04:00

The well-regarded steel-guitarist, banjo player, and experimental Pelt dronist Jack Rose teams up with the alternative string trio the Black Twig Pickers for this self-named 2009 collaboration. This isn't your typical Americana project, however, even as it respects all the eternal verities. The ever-forward spirit of that original folk-alt pioneer John Fahey, a big Rose influence, infuses the proceedings from beginning to end. First there's the overall sound, raw without courting a faux primitivism; the guitarist favors a bracing, hard-edged attack and he brings the more easygoing Pickers along in his wake. And there's the formal structure of the songs themselves (many of which feature the occasional casual vocal from Picker Mike Ganglof). Rose even revisits two instrumental pieces--"Kensington Blues" and "Revolt"--from previous solo albums. For their part, the Black Twigs --Ganglof (vocals, guitar, fiddle), Isak Howell (guitar, harmonica), Nate Bowell (percussion)--provide a reliable, sympathetic foil for Rose's ambitious yet focused wanderings. The result is that JACK ROSE & THE BLACK TWIG PICKERS is a lively, sometimes busy, always swinging lesson in American music counterpoint.

-- Be Independent

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... not trendy hipster anti-folk or a post-modern reworking of traditional sounds for a jaded and novelty-starved market. (Dreaded Press)

2009-09-08T08:38:00-04:00

OK, so Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers are about as far out of my knowledge zone as anything that’s yet crossed my desk since starting up The Dreaded Press, and I see no shame in admitting that. Their self-titled album is true Americana folk – not trendy hipster anti-folk or a post-modern reworking of traditional sounds for a jaded and novelty-starved market. Rose himself plays steel guitar, and the Black Twig Pickers back him up with fiddle, harmonica, guitar, banjo and percussion. The end result: something that sounds like the ideal soundtrack to a well-earned sippin’ whisky after a long hard day panning for gold in the sun-swept California riverbeds of 1849.

What’s remarkable about it, for me at least, is how we can be so familiar with this sort of music as a stylistic cliché despite hardly ever hearing it in the modern media space. It’s strangely comfortable, like a shabby but much-loved greatcoat acquired from an elderly relative: distinctly different to the fashions of the moment, but instantly recognisable, timeless and practical. The chicken-scratch rhythms, the nasal and untutored harmonies of the vocals, the traditional chord sequences embellished with effortless detail by musicians whose familiarity with their instruments leads to a virtuosity that has nothing to do with fretwank grandstanding and everything to do with the sheer joy of battering out a rollicking tune with your buddies. Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers are locked into the rhythm on every track here, and the wilfully basic (as opposed to deliberately lo-fi) production lends the whole affair the same vibe as a live set in some unknown bar. The throat-clearing noise between “Soft Steel Piston” and “Some Happy Day” pretty much sums it up: no pretence whatsoever.

Do Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers play the best Americana there is? I couldn’t possibly say – as pointed out above, it’s not a genre I know well enough to assess on that level. But what I can say for certain is that this is a mellow and diverting collection of tracks that had me tapping my foot from beginning to end, daydreaming of the golden age of railroads and the dirt-street town architecture of the more authentic Westerns. Perhaps that’s a crass and clichéd summary, and if so I offer Mr Rose and company my apologies; I mean only to say that I enjoyed it very much. Maybe you will too.

-- The Dreaded Press

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... it's something of a shock to hear vocals on a Rose-related record. (Brainwashed)

2009-08-25T14:01:47-04:00

After listening to the last few Jack Rose records religiously, it's something of a shock to hear vocals on a Rose-related record. But that's just what you get as this self-titled disc starts up: a cover of "Little Sadie" rambling and swinging hard like the rock 'n' roll cornerstone it is. Colored with shades of bluegrass, blues, and country music, this self-titled record takes American roots music and strips it until all that's left is its energy and attitude.

Except that the group covers a couple of tunes from Kensington Blues and Dr. Ragtime and His Pals, it's tempting to think that The Black Twig Pickers are the stars of this record more than Rose is. When "Little Sadie" kicks the record off, the first thing I hear isn't Jack's guitar. Instead, a flurry of fiddle, tin can percussion, and harmonica blow out of the speakers with either Nathan Bowles or Mike Gangloff blurting out lyrics like a drunken member of the audience. "Little Sadie" has seen many incarnations, but most people probably know it as "Cocaine Blues" and are likely to be familiar with the Folsom Prison version by Johnny Cash more than any other. The need-no-one attitude and rebellious quality of that song sets the pace for the rest of the record, which teeters between bluegrass, country music, and the sobriety of Rose's well-crafted instrumental jams.

Many of the album's highlights are the songs with vocals. It's fun to hear "Kensington Blues" played by a talented bluegrass group, but Jack Rose's typically contemplative mannerisms don't exactly match the band's upbeat tempo and tendency to play a ramshackle style. Nonetheless, Rose's performance falls in line perfectly with the rest of the band and his rhythm playing holds together its myriad impulses. On the surface there seems to be a lot in common between this album and Dr. Ragtime and His Pals, but where the former often wound itself up into hypnotic patterns, this one lets loose and aims for a grittier, more physical satisfaction. To that end the band keeps their songs strong and simple. They forgo showy instrumentation in favor of solid melodies and galloping, dancey beats and in the process give their music a tough, almost punk-like exterior. That's not to say they've cramped their country style any, they've just amplified it with the kind of swagger that was once synonymous with it.

-- Lucas Schleicher

Brainwashed

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - The late November view from A.P. and Sara's headstones ... (Yeti)

2009-08-19T19:46:18-04:00

From Clinch Mountain to Blacksburg

The late November view from A.P. and Sara's headstones is as mythic as you'd expect. Resting in a cemetery behind the family's longtime church, Mount Vernon United Methodist, itself at the foot of Clinch Mountain, the Carters overlook Virginia State Secondary 614, the primary road cutting through Poor Valley. To the south rise mountain peaks drenched in mist, stray cloud circling like formless ghosts. Trees are bare save for a few stubborn patches of deep rust. In the woods beyond the church lurks a procession of gutted shacks and decayed cabins.

Before trekking up this hill I was down the road mile or two, touring the Carter Fold, an immaculate stained-wood performance space and shrine dedicated to the Carter Family and the string-band tradition they helped immortalize. The Fold is all about the present bowing before the past, which is kind of what I'm doing on this road trip: wandering Appalachia and paying my respects to its musical heritage before driving a few hours north to Blacksburg to catch Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers, two of my modern faves.

These guys have played a handful shows as a single unit, but I've yet to see them, and all I've heard from this burgeoning union is a CD-R of six tracks to appear on an album in 2009, plus a 7-inch released last year on the Great Pop Supplement imprint. Not a lot of material, but it has me thinking the collaboration might be exceptional.

Rose and the Twigs' Mike Gangloff spent a good chunk of the 1990s several hours east, in Richmond, where they explored psychedelic drones in the underground band Pelt. The last eight years, however, the two have undergone radical transformations while traveling separate paths. Relocating to Philadelphia, Rose now plays was commonly referred to as progressive folk guitar, a maverick blend of rural blues, ragtime, some Indian classical, just that anything else he can weave into his instrument compositions. Gangloff, meanwhile, morphed into a banjo player and fiddler obsessed with old-time music. The Black Twig Pickers (also featuring guitarist Isak Howell and washboard player Nathan Bowles) have become one of Appalachia's best young bands. In addition to releasing five albums -- the newest conveniently always better than the last -- the trio is a regular on Southwest Virginia's festival/jamboree circuit.

When I think about where Rose and his pals and Twigs have been and where they're headed, it blows my mind. Apart from former Bad Livers banjoist Ralph White, they're the only contemporary musicians I know of who've explored both American folk and avante-garde -- and sound as if they're card-carrying members of both.

A necessary detour

Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers are anomalies in the modern era. To understand why, we need to survey the times. About a month before this trip I wrote an acid little piece for Seattle Weekly titled "Indie Rockers Are Planned Americana, They're Playing Dress-Up." It's me taking on all the shaggy hippies and underground freakers out there dabbling in Appalachian folk, country music, and roots rock. America in case you haven't noticed, has been inundated with their kind of the last several years.

I'm going to grossly overgeneralize here and say that most of these bearded dilettantes fall into one of two categories: they're either suburbanites weaned on alternative pop who now yearn for a sense of "roots" based in large part on the rustic mythology surrounding The Band/Basement Tapes, or they're post-hard-core free-improv types who now yearn for sense of "roots" based in large part on the rustic mythology surrounding the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Take Dr. Dog for example: Track down the July 2008 issue of *Relix* and how this Philly group loves to dress all 19th-century railroad, as if they'd been born in the rolling hills around Big Pink. Yet their sound is way more Brit-pop and country rock; they would have been the ideal house band at the Elton John's Honky Chateau.

Then there's Daniel Higgs of Lungfish. His idea of American folk music entails playing the crazy shaman card. He beats his banjo and hand anti-rhythmic pulp while coughing up ancient hermetic text. Fans think he's deep specifically because he's not concerned with songwriting or musicianship; he's too primitive, to "real" for that stuff.

These two obviously run in different circles (blogosphere pop versus outsider/free folk), but both embody the number-one problem I have with most indie and underground musicians currently interested in folk music: they never practice full immersion. They're content to raid country, blues, hillbilly, etc., for a gunnysack of vintage instruments, cool sounds, and fashion tips. This is probably their intent, of course, but to me the work that emerges is deeply unsatisfying.

My favorite mergers/fusions/marriages, call them what you will, featured musicians who' ve explored folk music just as thoroughly as they have rock. *American Beauty* and *Workingman's Dead* could only be made because Jerry Garcia was a serious student of bluegrass and jug band music. The same is true of Muleskinner's lone LP from 1973. Its mixture of bluegrass and hard-rock heft works in large part because the band (Peter Rowan, Clarence White, David Grossman, Richard Greene, and Bill Keith) spent years learning their trade with the likes of Bill Monroe, the Kentucky Colonels, Red Allen, and the Even Dozen Jug Band. They were mostly hippie types who loved breaking rules -- but they knew those rules had to be learned first. Genres like bluegrass and old-time are comparable to an esoteric practice or spiritual discipline. Their powers can't be harnessed through detached experimentation; first you have to submit yourself to the demands of the craft.

The Cellar

Those who live in Appalachia often obsess over the subtle changes the country undergoes from county to county, state to state. I live in Asheville, North Carolina, where the vertical and horizontal rarely find a happy compromise. Things are different up here. Rolling hills carpeted in sharp green pasture land together deep narrow valleys and their accompanying ridges. The descent into Blacksburg from U.S. Route 460 is particularly awesome. Massive cloud shadows creep along the bulging earth. But the nightfall comes, and within those mountain wins, making it as good a time as any to be inside, drinking and listening to music

The Cellar is a two-story tavern across from Virginia Tech's sprawling campus. Tonight's show is free, believe it or not (Rose's obsessive fanbase most certainly won't). In fact, few of the patrons are here to see Rose and the Twigs, who are basically providing "live entertainment" for a roomful of garrulous college kids. That's fine with them. This gig is largely an excuse to rehearse and knock back a beer or four. Tomorrow they'll head over to Gangloff's toolshed studio in Ironto to record more tracks for a debut full-length tentatively titled Black/Jack.

The idea of a collaboration grew out of sessions for Rose's *Dr. Ragtime and His Pals* LP, recorded in 2007. Wanting to flesh out the ragtime/Piedmont blues hybrid he'd first introduced on his previous album, the guitarist rang up his former Pelt cohort, who brought along Bowles. The trio worked so well together they soon added Howell on guitar and harmonica. "One great aspect of working with Jack is that it frees Isak to play much more harp," says Gangloff while we're gathered around a couple pitchers of beer. "I love listening to him play. The [upcoming] record will be Isak's harp record as much as anything else."

Rose, whose blunt honesty stands at odds with his graceful and introspective finger picking, expands on these comments. "I think we're doing something that's not heard in the Twigs' local scene or in the contemporary underground scene," he adds. "We're not dabbling with folk forms trying to make them sound contemporary or psychedelic. We can actually play our instruments without the 'free folk' label, which I think lots of other musicians use to cover up their lack of musical skill. Plus, we swing like a motherfucker."

After Rose and the Twigs each play a set of their own, they come together and tear into some killer old-time, including a wonderfully rickety version of "Hand Me Down My Walking Cane." And now it's time to refine those comparisons I made to Muleskinner and the Grateful Dead. My fundamental point still holds true, but this music is of a far older vintage, more akin to the great fusions of the 1920s -- say, banjoist Charlie Poole adding a dash of ragtime to his hillbilly.

"Jack/Black music is on the traditional side of things," Gangloff tells me. "But you can hear where we've been."

Permeating every song is an understanding of how music can be constructed and shaped. This knowledge, a welcomed byproduct of all those years spent exploring the actual physics of sound, is something these four would never have had access to if they'd grown up playing only traditional folk. As a result, their tunes feel far more textural and three-dimensional than those of your average Appalachian string band. Consideration is given to every note.

As for the grooves, they're well-oiled but never sloppy or needlessly rambunctious. Earlier in the evening, Gangloff seemed almost nerdy, but he undergoes a transformation when he's making music. His back hunched, a pair of glasses teetering on the tip of his nose, he plucks the banjo or saws the fiddle while stomping his feet and croaking like a true mountain musician. Bowles, meanwhile, is a percussive monster on the washboard, all four limbs snaking about like chrome-plated rattlers. Howell, clean-cut like Gangloff, fills out the middle with a sturdy strum. He's a killer rhythm player and in many ways serves as the group's anchor: head down and head for home. Rose takes up the rear, buttressing the doglegs with a combination of subtle licks and thorny details. His fingers never stop moving in and out of those strings.

"Innovation is cool," he'd said earlier, just after finishing his solo set. "But you have to be humble about it.One of the things that's unique about me and the Twigs is, you don't hear a lot of finger picking in old-time bands. My favorite pre-war music is jug-band music, so playing with these guys gives me a chance to play some of my favorite classic blues riffs that I don't get to play solo too often."

To see this guy shift into cog-in-the-machine mode takes some getting used to. For me, as well as a lot of fans, he is *the* Jack Rose, one of the modern era's great soloists. When he plays it's just him and his guitar -- which is how he likes it for the most part. A hardnosed individualist, he's outspoken, direct, and always up for a debate.

These qualities bleed into his views on Appalachian folk. Although Rose is an astute student and voracious consumer, he's a sharp critic of the music, with very little use for the culture and history surrounding it. "I love old-time, but I just want to hear the innovators, so it doesn't seem as traditional to me," explains Rose, as he puts away one of his prized possessions, a Weissenborn lap steel. "You have a vision of what you want to create, but you're just using traditional sources."

As Rose talks I think back to the Carter fold and its altar-like stage. Musicans play (worship?) with their backs to a wall that's been transformed into a jigsaw of memorabilia: framed portraits, legendary instruments, and giant murals of A.P., Sara, and Mother Maybelle. For Gangloff and company it would be an honor to play on such hallowed ground -- this is their heritage. Rose, on the other hand, continues to identify with the underground; he's too much of an iconoclast and loner for such a scene. And it's more than the genuflection that would turn him off.

"Mike listens to a lot of contemporary stuff, and he plays them for me," he says. "But honestly, I'd rather hear him play. Of course, I'm prejudiced, but I think Mike is a bad ass, and I don't need to hear these other new dudes."

Floyd

What exactly does Rose hear in the Twigs that he doesn't in their peers? Well, it's obvious he's attracted to the way they innovate within a traditional framework. Their latest album, 2008's *Hobo Handshake*, easily passes the old-time scene's litmus test for authenticity. But unlike a lot of modern folk music from Appalachia, the record isn't awash in reverence or overly insular; tracks like "Last Kind Word Blues," "Glory in the Meeting House," "Rattletrap," and the seven-minute "Train 45" are jagged and impolite. I believe this intensity dervies primarly from the Twigs' belief that old-time isn't some delicate artifact in need of a museum's protective bosom. Nor do the Twigs subscribe to folk revivalism or the faithful recreation of old 78s. Instead, they've actually explored the backroads culture of southwest Virginia, soaking up knowledge from "real deal" country musicians like Richard Bowman, Harold Hausenfluck, and Coolidge Winesett, all of them fiddlers.

Much of this firsthand contact came courtesy of the Twigs' former fiddle man, Ralph Berrier Jr., whose family's roots run deep in the regional scene. "I fell in love with this part of the country," says Gangloff, acknowledging Berrier's pivotal contributions. "Old-time is a living creature here."

Nowhere is this more apparent than at the Floyd Country Store. Two weeks after the gig at the Cellar I head up to Floyd, a happening little burg 40 minutes south of Blacksburg, not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway. About once a month, the Black Twigs play the Friday Night Jamoboree, one of Appalachia's most popular hubs for old-time and bluegrass. The Country Store is a nostalgic clapboard box packed with mountain crafts, books, CDs, candy bursting from antique barrels, and local souvenirs. There's even an ice-cream parlour. The performance space takes up the back half of the store, the backdrop of which, a faux-country storefront, resembles those seen in classic photos of the Monroe Brothers when they played barn dances in the '30s.

Over the next hour or so, the place fills up with a motley assortment of regulars (locals, along with oddball transplants who've turned into locals) and curious tourists from Southern hubs like Richmond, Atlanta and Charleston. There's not a single underground head or indie hipster to be found. Likewise, the Twigs are here neither to make "Jack/Black music" nor to get all "crooked" (more of a festival/jam circle thing). They're here to make folks get up and move -- and they're good at it, even if it's something the band had to learn. "At first we didn't get invited back for two years, because we insisted on playing the slow stuff," admits Gangloff while the Twigs warm up in a green room on the second floor. "But it's not what people want there."

A smattering of couples dance in a more conventional style, but it's the cloggers, both young and old, who dominate the floor. One pair is straight out of a 1940s honky tonk; others look more NASCAR. When the Twigs, rocking up and down like three steel pistons, lock into a particularly tight groove, the crowd hurls whoops and hollers toward the stage.

The Country Store scene is a seriously good time. It also reveals the depth of experience the Twigs bring to their collaboration with Rose. I wish I could drag all them indie folkie types here to see what it takes to truly get inside a style of music. Going far beyond genre pilfering, these guys embraced an entire culture in search of their sound. This is the stuff great fusions and mergers are made of. Near the end of the Twigs' set, the dude next to me taps his friend on the shoulder and nails exactly what I am thinking. "The fiddle player is this guy Mike Gangloff," he says in disbelief. "I first met him in Richmond in the 1980s. He used to have super long hair and play in hardcore bands, man!"

-- Justin Farrar

Yeti

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... archaic musical disciplines ... (Boomkat)

2009-08-17T13:25:00-04:00

Acoustic guitar virtuoso Jack Rose joins forces with the mighty Black Twig Pickers, one of America's finest contemporary bluegrass groups, for this new long-player on Beautiful Happiness. The recording style is busy, at times sounding like it's been laid down using a single mic, and this only conspires to give the album a certain Appalachian authenticity. Tunes like 'Little Sadie' and 'Soft Steel Piston' romp along with a slight coating of distortion as fiddle, guitars and makeshift percussion overload the tape, yet as lo-fi as the delivery occasionally sounds the standard of musicianship never fails to impress: Rose and his cohorts brilliantly replicate the archaic musical disciplines of rootsy Americana, with instrumental rags like 'Sail Away Ladies - I Shall Not Be Moved' sounding particularly fantastic. Longterm Rose fans will be pleased to find the modern-day Takoma-schooled classic 'Kensington Blues' given a fresh airing here with a full band arrangement, and likewise 'Bright Sunny South' (from Rose's early work as part of Pelt) makes a welcome appearance. Brilliant stuff.

-- Boomkat

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... mighty mountain music indeed ... (Uncut)

2009-08-17T13:15:32-04:00

This is mighty mountain music indeed, a match-up between finger-picking maestro Rose and bluegrass trio the Black Twig Pickers that's in the best traditions of Americana. Rose revisits the best of his long back catalogue -- his sublime "Kensington Blues" gets a regal treatment. Meanwhile, there are also stellar takes on trad songs, in particular the barnstorming murder ballad "Little Sadie", which opens the set with gusto.

-- Peter Shepherd Uncut

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... some HOT tunes to melt your butter with. (American Primitive)

2009-08-14T17:32:42-04:00

The fantastic American Primitive guitar man Jack Rose has teamed up with one of the best old time/fiddle/string bands around The Black Twig Pickers! Their new self-titled album is out now on Klang records ($20 if you wanna know what it'll cost ya). Jack's solo guitar records have been slay'n ears for quite awhile. Add the Black Twigs sound to his brand of guitar pick and you've got some HOT tunes to melt your butter with. The Black Twigs bring some clawhammer fretless banjo, fiddle, harmonica, and some fantastic washboard & other percussian sounds like fiddlesticks to the mix and not to mention for the first time I believe vocals on a Jack Rose records. I was lucky enough to catch the Jack/Black set at Terrastock and in my opinion it was one of the highlights of the entire festival. Which at the time of the festival the Dr. Ragtime and Pals had just been reissued which was a Jack Rose Lp w/ some guest spot by the Black Twigs. The new album is the blossoms of the seeds planted on Dr. Ragtime Lp. So do yourself a favour if you enjoy sittin on the porch sippin beer or bourbon and enjoying some good tunes than this is what you need.

-- John, American Primitive

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... one of the most compelling no-nonsense folk albums of the year. (Dusted)

2009-08-12T14:28:56-04:00

Jack Rose has spent virtually the entire decade cultivating a sound rooted in Takoma revivalism and prewar folk music to great success. Beginning with the 2001 CD-R Hung Far Low, Rose has tried different approaches for his guitar-playing talents, from acoustic six-string to lap steel to 12-string. Following a recent touring stint and last year’s reissue of Dr. Ragtime and Pals and Self-Titled, he’s back to thumbpicking the acoustic six-string for reliable imprint VHF here. Interestingly, the big story isn’t that Rose once again has his name on a flawlessly engaging folk album – it’s that he isn’t the star. Galax, Virginia’s Black Twig Pickers do far more than merely back Rose, making this one of the most compelling no-nonsense folk albums of the year.

Part of the reason these 11 songs work so well is the comfort level Rose has with the Twigs. Nathan Bowles and Mike Gangloff have recorded with Rose before on the Dr. Ragtime LP, and Gangloff and Rose got their start in improv drone unit Pelt in the mid-90s. Nobody’s worried about stepping on toes or bruising egos as a result; the two parties play like they enjoy the challenge of bringing out the best in each other both. It helps that the album features a balanced mixture of instrumentals with Gangloff-led vocal takes, rollicking foot-stompers with slower ballads, and old-time standards with Rose originals.

“Little Sadie” jumpstarts the music, a scorching rendition better familiar to listeners from Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait or Johnny Cash’s alternately titled “Cocaine Blues.” The gritty fidelity of the recording suits the Twigs at the outset, as the swirl of Isak Howell’s swift strumming, Bowles’ kitchen sink percussion, and Gangloff’s nasal drawl all but drown out Rose’s playing. Generally, the faster the song, the more it’s a Twigs kind of time (understandable given that these guys host a monthly dance night at Floyd Country Store outside Roanoke). While it’s evident Rose is more at home on contemplative instrumentals like “Special Rider” or his own “Revolt,” that famous fingerpicking goodness can still shine on faster jams such as “Soft Steel Piston” and “Ride Ole Buck.” A pleasant surprise is Pelt original “Bright Sunny South” lodged late in the album, just before “Goodbye Booze” brings the album to a woozy close. [Ed. note: Bright Sunny South is a traditional song, not a Pelt original, though Pelt recorded a version also.]

Jack Rose & The Black Twig Pickers is a smartly presented package featuring the most interesting elements of traditional Appalachian folk music that won’t get dull, because it doesn’t rely solely on one influence or another. The synchronicity Jack Rose and the Twigs were in when they made this record is plain to see, and as counterweights for the others’ creative tendencies, there’s no other way it could’ve turned out.

By Patrick Masterson

Dusted

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... a gracious hand that never feels trite or contrived. (Foxy Digitalis)

2009-08-12T09:13:48-04:00

This one comes in a solid black card case with contrasting white lettering in Impact font appearing as a Lettrist print of Modernist tendencies. That is until you read the lettering and discover it’s probably a foray into the roots of Americana courtesy of Jack Rose & Co. Those who have fallen for the many recent JR records will find an album less about introversion and exquisite solo guitar explorations (in the vein of Fahey), but more about good old rocking and ranting with honesty, drama and a shit load of whiskey! The playful union of the four musicians involved remains tight throughout, yet there is an organic feeling to the sound that dirties the crisp production wonderfully. Mike Gangloff’s strings ignite alongside JR’s finger plucking, with some tempered percussion from Nate Bowles. Piercing Harmonica from Isak Howell gets the party into full swing. The album feels like a journey through early American music, yet has an approach that feels like it’s been handed down to the players rather than studied. There is little of the polish and insincerity that accompanies many country, folk and roots practitioners.

The quieter toe tapping moments (see ‘Sail Away Ladies’), draw from tradition with a gracious hand that never feels trite or contrived. The players deliver intricate music with a grace that allows the listener to truly imagine they’re pitched on wooden floorboards in barn under a starry sky. The album opens with possibly the weakest track in the form of ‘Little Sadie’, where Gangloff’s vocals sound a little strained, and whine with an ill-timed feel. There’s an improvement in his delivery come ‘Hand Me Down My Walking Cane’, where his tone is believable and achieves the narrative’s black humour. The banjo plucking twangs gloriously in the barn behind. ‘Some Happy Day’ feels just like Fahey’s ‘How Green Was My Valley’ (previously covered by JR). This is a definite highlight with unparalleled guitar playing. ‘Ride Old Buck’ rocks with the power of Mississippi John Hurt; its antiquity made fresh. ‘Revolt’ begins as one might imagine a JR record, but soon becomes a swinging rhythm and blues number. Contained within the roster are classic JR outings, a highlight being ‘Kensington Blues’ which takes a sunny guise, juxtaposed to its usual veneer. The final goodbye is a holler from a charming recovering alcoholic reminiscing about the bad old days of whiskey drinking and vice. ‘Goodbye Booze’ has such a warm glow; it could have been snapped from ‘Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music’. I’m now heading for the drinks cabinet. Gonna poor myself a long one and sit on my balcony while the summer breeze tickles my unclipped toes. 8/10

-- Peter Taylor

Foxy Digitalis

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... breastfed on Jack Daniels ... (The Skinny)

2009-08-03T09:33:07-04:00

With the recent resurgence in nu-folk (Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart), alt-folk (Iron and Wine) and anti-folk (David Cronenberg’s Wife), you’d think that all corners of the market were saturated. That is, until someone like Jack Rose comes along, his weather-beaten songs standing testament to how life really is down in the grim and gritty folk trenches, with his tour of duty consisting of many moons spent trawling the underground. The Black Twig Pickers clearly mean business, incorporating elements of bluegrass and country into songs that are resolutely not twee, but salt-of-the-earth earnest (that’s earnest borne out of blood sweat and tears, rather than some marketable commodity). The album seesaws between breakneck speed instrumentals to more contemporary folk tracks, sung by a man who sounds like he was breastfed on Jack Daniels; probably an album then, to soundtrack you drinking your sorrows away, instead of encouraging you to moan about them.

-- Ewen Millar

The Skinny

Pleasure is the Headlight - ... the cartoony cover only acts as a smokescreen for the deep, deep vibes contained within ... (Mimaroglu)

2009-07-26T15:49:22-04:00

long-awaited double-lp from the klang industries house band of mikel dimmick, mike gangloff, nathan bowles, amy shea, and assorted friends & hangers-on ...

starting off w/ an immense, side-long gong-bath (listen to the sound-sample) the band conjure up a bunch of different modes, from near-stasis, to scrabbly, string-laced group-mind activities, coming across as the brain-child of the theater of eternal music and the incredible string band ...

absolutely gorgeous gatefold double-lp edition from kris burwash’s uzu audio ; the cartoony cover only acts as a smokescreen for the deep, deep vibes contained within (the inner “gongs on the beach” layout is much more telling ... ) ; highly recommended !!!

-- Mimaroglu

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - This is a jug-swigging, toe-tapping, and uproarious album of Appalachian booty rap. (Other Music)

2009-07-21T08:54:19-04:00

"We swing like a motherfucker," Jack Rose proclaimed in a recent interview. He was attempting to explain why Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers should not be classified as "free folk," and is just plain better music than the vast majority of poorly-played hipster nonsense encompassed by that fashionable subgenre. After all, the man is playing dance music, and he plays it mighty fine. This is a jug-swigging, toe-tapping, and uproarious album of Appalachian booty rap. Backed by the Black Twig Pickers, Jack Rose standards like "Kensington Blues" receive royal reworking, fleshing out the implications of one of Rose's staples.

Rose and the Black Twig Pickers are no strangers, as they've worked together for Dr. Ragtime & Pals on Tequila Sunrise, and Rose and Mike Gangloff used to play together in Pelt (in fact, this record features a sweet return to the Pelt song "Ayahuasca" [Ed. note: Actually, the song is "Bright Sunny South," a version of which was on Pelt's album "Ayahuasca."). Rose is building a deep and diverse catalog, but I can say definitively that this one is amongst his best. There is a tangible energy coming out when these guys play together, and you can't help but be swept up by it. As far as old-time, true, original bluegrass is concerned, this is peerless. The songs are tight, Gangloff, Isak Howell, and Nathan Bowles shine in accompaniment, with banjo, fiddle, and harmonica reaching far back into the Blue Ridge Mountains to accompany Rose's finger-picking six string. The wax is heavy and sounds impeccable. This is real, genuine down-home music at its very best, and these boys swing like a motherfucker.

-- Brian Cassidy, Other Music

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... letting the night settle comfortably on all those within earshot. (Raven Sings the Blues)

2009-07-20T09:52:09-04:00

Rose has always had a foot closer to actual Appalachian Folk than he has to most of the new crop of fingerpicked, psych-folk leaning crowd and on his latest VHF release he cracks that root open wide and proud. The album swings like a barn dance, the air thick and full of autumn harvest and a certain magic letting the night settle comfortably on all those within earshot. Aided nicely by Mike Gangloff on banjo, Isak Howell on guitar and harmonica and Nate Bowles rustling up all manner of percussion, Jack and the Black Twig Pickers seem to slip out of time, recalling an era when simple skill eschewed need for a second take. Their S/T album rolls the hills and lays back to rest and watch the clouds. It seems to breathe a cleaner air than you an I. The boys can't help but slip a smile on the stodgiest of cynics faces with their earthen stomp. Pick this one up on LP though, because the ol' gramophone won’t know what to do with that digital muck.

-- Raven Sings the Blues

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers - ... from wild campfire old school blue grass hoedowns to more darkly contemplative folk explorations... (Aquarius Records)

2009-07-16T20:16:51-04:00

Sometime labelmates Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers finally team up for a record together. Unlike most Rose records, which while delicate and dark and beautiful, are also showcases for one of the most incredible guitar virtuosos playing these days, this collaboration is way more of a team effort. There are definitely moments where you can hear Rose doing his thing, but for the most part, he's part of the band here, and the rest of the Twig Pickers are pretty serious players themselves.

Guitar, banjo, fiddle, bass drum, harmonica, vocals and bones (!), the tracks here veer from wild campfire old school blue grass hoedowns to more darkly contemplative folk explorations, and pretty much every stop in between. Tone of intricate fingerpicking, the stringed instruments getting tangled up in flurries of rapid fire notes, the vocals wild and loose, in fact the whole recording is pretty loose, like they just got together and jammed, which who knows, could be just how this happened.

Folks looking for pure solo guitar Appalachia probably won't find what they're looking for, although elements surface throughout, but for folks into old timey blues, classic bluegrass, those Mississippi blues reissue lps, and the more rollicking tracks on past Rose records, this will totally hit the spot.

-- Aquarius

Little Sparrow - ... somthing that is at times very familiar to the ears and in other moments like something from another planet. (Foxy Digitalis)

2009-07-16T08:31:45-04:00

Featuring members of Pelt and hailing from Virginia, Spiral Joy Band returns with another solid collection of analog drones and improvisations. The band blends up its intoxicating stew using fiddles, gongs, singing bowls, harmonium, srutis, spiral cymbal, crank whistle, flute, bells, and banjo sticks with "No overdubs, No amplification, No effects." Put together, these elements yield something that is at times very familiar to the ears and in other moments like something from another planet. With music based loosely in eastern traditions, rural American sounds, and experimental improvisation, the Spiral Joy Band creates something quite striking.

The biggest standouts on the album are the droning fiddles, as they cut most prominently through the mix and set the tone for all four pieces. On the opener, "Ridgeline Currents," the violins trade slow-rolling riffs and swirl above a background of cymbals, singing bowls, and harmonium. The next two tracks continue in a similar direction, but both yield their own surprises. For example, in the final stretch of "Flowers in the Dooryard," the band creates a powerful wall of drones with fiddles, flutes, and harmonium that grows and swells into something very intense, yet entirely pretty. For the title track, the band makes things a bit uglier, filling the mix with squealing and scraping fiddles. In the background, banjo plucks away, the harmonium continues its steady drone, and the piercing sound of singing bowls occasionally rises to the surface. The harsher sounds of this piece are a great contrast two the preceding two and do well to illustrate the dynamism of the group. The closer, "Tolling Over the Rocks," is unique, as it was recorded as the band stood in the water at midnight at Hatteras Island, North Carolina. To the sound of crashing waves, the band added their own singing bowls and gongs to create a beautiful, meditative finale for their album.

Throughout "Little Sparrow," it's amazing to think that such rich, layered, and hypnotic sounds come from such a no-frills recording process. Really, it enriches the whole experience to ponder how something so stunning and dynamic could come from such humble origins. Of course, this is all a testament to the musicianship of the Spiral Joy Band, as they make the most of their chosen sounds. "Little Sparrow" is truly great, but is also a limited edition, so do yourself a favor and grab this one soon.

-- Matt Blackall, Foxy Digitalis

Pleasure is the Headlight - ... a potentially more radical take ... (Volcanic Tongue)

2009-06-28T06:50:16-04:00

Very few groups – any? – have picked up on the blueprint laid down by the ‘classic’ Pelt line-up, where they took on the mantle of the Hillbilly Theatre Of Eternal Music, making overt - like no one outside of Henry Flynt - the common sonic properties shared by psychoactive minimalism, modern raga forms and classic American Primitive. Spiral Joy Band formed in the wake of Pelt, featuring both Mike Gangloff and Mikel Dimmik of that group alongside Amy Shea and Nathan Bowles and they posited a potentially more radical take on Pelt’s no-mind country blues, using very minimal- though profoundly amplified - gong and percussion suites in order to activate visions of the kind of blank American topography of mid-period NNCK, Harry Partch and Harry Bertoia. Pleasure Is The Headlight presents a deluxe, beautifully packaged double 180g LP in a run of 400 copies in custom gatefold jackets with letter pressed cover art and silk screened innards inspired by the Rev. A W Nix’s “Black Diamond Express To Hell”. Three sides of foggy, thunder tones, singing strings and hypnotic country reverie and a final side of oddities, including a live solo wind chime performance and a Taj Mahal Travellers-style beach performance. Excellent and by far the best release from this group to date.

-- Volcanic Tongue

Little Sparrow - ... it's like staring at the sun ... like some late afternoon country hoedown ... (Aquarius)

2009-06-21T10:21:08-04:00

Very few bands benefit from a list of their instrumentation, but a group like the Spiral Joy Band, that list has much to say about the sounds to be found within: fiddles, gongs, bowls, harmonium, srutis, spiral cymbal, crash cymbal, crank whistle, flute, bells, banjosticks. Even more telling are these words from the liner notes: "no overdubs, no amplification, no effect". Spiral Joy Band are drone explorers, purists who spend their time rubbing and bowing and striking various objects to conjure up elements they can weave into their hauntingly mysterious organic drone music. While we're typically partial to the low end of the sonic spectrum, upper register tones have a magic all their own, and create an entirely different world of sound. Henry Flynt is definitely a good reference point for the Spiral Joy Band, notice that fiddles (plural!) were the first instrument listed, and the root of these sounds is definitely slow bowed fiddles, the sound is keening and moaning. and when all the fiddles get going together, it's like an acoustic version of Sunroof!, total glorious high end ur-drone nirvana. There's an element of twang to the sound, the sawed strings, it's unavoidable, the cymbals add another layer of shimmer, at it's most transcendent, it's like staring at the sun, glimmering, glistening, sparkling effulgence, the various overtones taking on a life of their own, at its most subtle, it's like some late afternoon country hoedown, but all slowed down, and all high end. So nice. This one is definitely not for drone dabblers, this one is for the true drone elite, looking to escape the sonic confines of this terrestrial world, to find musical salvation in the astral plane.

-- Aquarius