CREDIT: Jon Reece |
• If you must use something so silly as social media, be interesting about it. Perhaps like this: about 140 people have "joined" a Facebook effort to bring British dubstep act CARROT GANG to Portland, alleging that such a visit would fit nicely on the group's upcoming tour. We don't know this band (yet can surmise from their logo that an affection for weed is present), and don't necessarily give much of a hoot whether the effort succeeds. But! The very inkling of a music lobby, even a virtual one, banding together to exert influence over the city's cultural producers is enough to make you go hmmm...
• The famous local blues dude SAMUEL JAMES, whose new record And For the Dark Road Ahead is a taut and intimate sprawler, heads to Russia next week for five dates on something called the Modern Blues Masters Tour. Then he winds down late April in England and Spain and returns home to hit his last-Thursday-of-the-month spot at BLUE. That man has come such a long way; and has such a long way to go. We can't think of a better definition of success.
• And now let us consider JARED FAIRFIELD, a name that belongs to a tirelessly inventive music producer yet never appears in the papers. Over the last five or six years, Fairfield has: operated a tape label from his home; labored over the production of several cool, T-Rexy, freak-folk full-lengths that got scattered blogosphere nods yet went largely unnoticed in the material ether; collabed with JAKOB BATTICK's Afraid to make last year's syrupy-gorgeous EMF split; and just this spring put the finishing touch on Nightwinds, his original soundtrack to a dreamy-as-shit imaginary film. Nightwinds is the stuff of pure adult fantasy: twelve tracks of cirrus-y synths, whirling flutes, and ambient heat. When it isn't making us feel like a powerful narcotic from the lips of Jennifer Connelly has sent us to sleep underneath the church pews ("Mountains Appear Through the Seamist"), it's nudging us through a hazy spirit quest through the steppe ("White Flames Move Through the Boiling Lake"), or helping us haunt a steamy members-only Tokyo arcade until daybreak ("Trees Sway in a Nightwind"). If the film gets done and these scenes aren't in it, we'd still be psyched. For now, make up your own narrative at soundcloud.com/jaredfairfield, and look for a material copy of Nightwinds out on L'ANIMAUX TRYST before summer.
Topics:
New England Music News
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