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Davendra Banhart | Oh Me Oh My | Review
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erasingclouds.com | Dave Heatonone of the most unique voices you'll hear21 year old singer/songwriter Devendra Banhart has one of the most unique voices you'll hear...that is, one of the weirdest voices, a high but gritty, off-kilter, androgynous, wailing, trembling voice that is beautiful and scary. It's hard to take if you're not in the mood for it - as he'll shake you out of your chair when he really gets going - but absolutely transporting if you're ready for it. He sounds like an interplanetary Billie Holliday singing folk songs.. Filled with surrealism, his bizarre songs present a world filled with mystery, one where it's hard to find solid ground or logic. Even when he sings something as seemingly simple as "You certainly are nice people," he shrieks it in a way that makes you wonder what he really means by it. That multiplicity is part of what makes Oh Me Oh My...so fascinating. Banharts' songs are stunning puzzles, music that'll keep you up at night....
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PALESTINE/COULTER/MATHOUL | Maximin
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pitchforkmedia.com | John DarnielleReview - Ten Records That Render Life Bearable...Whilst Simultaneously Making the World Seem Like a Malevolent and Overwhelming Place, and Two Activities That Fill Up the Endless River of Empty Hours That Flows Elegantly Before Me in a Cascading Arc Across the Horizon; by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats 7. Palestine/Coulter/Mathoul: Maximin (young god records) This won't be released until the end of October, but once it comes out there are some stereos on which it will continue playing until time stops. Drone music from a composer named Charlemagne Palestine about whom lots of people apparently know lots of things and have lots of opinions. I'd never heard of him, but I played this thing at ridiculously high volume when I first got it and I almost saw God....
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Devendra Banhart | Oh Me Oh My... | Review
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All Music GuideJason MacNeilThe first thing that strikes you is his utterly unique and soft voicewhich seems a mix of Nick Drake and Marc Bolan. "Roots (If the Sky Were a Stone)" is a perfect example of this, as Banhart uses his vocals and an acoustic guitar to get his brief yet often memorable points across. Originally recorded on shoddy and broken four-track recorders, the songs have a definitive roughness and audible hiss on nearly all of them, giving them a certain authenticity rarely found. Cars can be heard driving past in "The Charles C. Leary," but that performance is only one of the many highlights here. A number of the tracks are less than or just over one minute in length, often stream-of-conscious poetry put to music. The fragility heard in "Nice People" resembles Victoria Williams but evolves into a Syd Barrett song structure, speaking of "wide ass suits and lion tattoos." Barrett can be discerned throughout the record, especially during "Gentle Soul." "Cosmos and Demos" lends itself more toward Pink Floyd performing something from Echoes, perhaps the acoustic-oriented "Fearless." Lyrically the songs are quite odd and occasionally nonsensical, particularly "Michigan State." Here Banhart speaks of a friend who......
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PALESTINE/COULTER/MATHOUL | Maximin
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pitchforkmedia.com | John DarnielleReview - Ten Records That Render Life Bearable...Whilst Simultaneously Making the World Seem Like a Malevolent and Overwhelming Place, and Two Activities That Fill Up the Endless River of Empty Hours That Flows Elegantly Before Me in a Cascading Arc Across the Horizon; by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats 7. Palestine/Coulter/Mathoul: Maximin (young god records) This won't be released until the end of October, but once it comes out there are some stereos on which it will continue playing until time stops. Drone music from a composer named Charlemagne Palestine about whom lots of people apparently know lots of things and have lots of opinions. I'd never heard of him, but I played this thing at ridiculously high volume when I first got it and I almost saw God....
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Charlemagne Palestine | Interview
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The Wire | Louise GrayInvisible Jukebox(with thanks to) The Wire September 2002 Charlemagne Palestine was born into a Russian Jewish in Brooklyn in 1947. From an early age he trained as a cantorial singer in the synagogues of New York. At 11, he spent a year playing conga for Tiny Tim in Manhattan clubs. Later, he began ringing the carillon at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, which was particularly responsive to the sonic overtones and drones and repetitions. Palestine was drawn into the 1960s New York art scene, and soon came into contact with Tony Conrad, who was his conduit to Andy Warhol’s and La Monte Young’s groups. He also worked with Indian classical singer Prandit Pran Nath. After graduating from the NYC High School of Music and Art, he researched synthesizer composition at NYU’s Intermedia Center. When its director, Morton Subotnick, moved to California Institute for the Arts (Cal Arts), he took the fledgling composer with him. There, Palestine encountered the Bosendorfer piano, whose harmonic spectrum provided with the sonic clarity he needed. While at Cal Arts, he built a drone machine to pursue lines begun with his earlier four hour organ work, Spectral Continuum Drones. Though he was associated......