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MICHAEL GIRA | I AM SINGING TO YOU FROM MY ROOM
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The Wire | Issue 245, July 2004 A gripping series of songs and wordless song sketchesThe title of this album- which is only available from Gira’s www.younggodrecords.com Website- is descriptive rather than poetic. It was mostly recorded in Gira’s office onto DAT. It’s almost impossible to listen to this intimate solo acoustic set without picturing Gira in the mind’s eye. It sounds like he looks, from the intimidating death’s head expression, through to his tastefully austere tailoring and that smoke wreathed voice dried out by endless cigars. Gira’s lyrics include allusions to pestilence, death, sailor songs, an avenging angel in “Destroyer†and the haunting, unfathomable characters of “Michael’s White Handsâ€. It’s tempting to surmise that he is tapping into folk archetypes. One pictures the sharp suit and haunted face of early 20th century Country blues singer Dock Boggs, to whom Gira bears a passing physical resemblance, and his songs of betrayal and murder. But Gira is undoubtedly of his age, sophisticated and urbane. I Am Singing To You is a gripping series of songs and wordless song sketches. However, rather than giving any insight into Gira’s work, it demonstrates what has untied all of it since early Swans recordings like......
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Devendra Banhart | Rejoicing in the Hands
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xtm.it | by Hamilton Santià in ItalianLa seconda prova del menestrello Devendra Banhart è un convincente esempio di lo-fi/folk che affina ancora di più quanto espresso con l’esordio “Oh me oh my…â€; non rifacendosi a modelli classici (Bob Dylan e Neil Young ad esempio) ma citando gente come Caetano Veloso, i 16 episodi di questo “Rejoicing the Hands†ci offrono un ritratto spassionato ed intimo di un personaggio singolare e onesto. Attraverso le tracce del disco - registrate sempre in una maniera casalinga ma con qualche velleità professionale in più - l’artista si mostra nudo, con una chitarra e qualche eventuale percussione o arco e ci descrive il suo mondo con una leggerezza e una fragilità positivamente sconcertante. Il mondo di Devendra è quel limbo di terra tra l’immensità del deserto e il mistero dell’oceano, un mondo fatto di suggestioni e di immagini dipinte su tela o tradotte in delicati arpeggi che riescono ad aprire la porta di questo affascinante universo al quale è impossibile non rimanere coinvolti....
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Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in the hands
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Rien - the ugly culture | by D.S.Conclusion: a small marvelBeards... Them obscure filamentous composites of the cheeks and chins that certain humanoid specimens carry, as with the burden of this quasi-daily ritual that became known as "shaving". Might they be a fabulous resting place of our friends the muses? In order to confirm this extravagant - albeit plausible - theory, and listening only to my own courage, I decided to start a meticulous inspection of the bushy population of my own face. The spoils were few: an important colony of lice, a rusty secator and the putrefied remains of a pizza from another era... Not a single trace of a muse of any kind. Elementary: Which divinity in its own right would dare distill her precious inspiration to a hygenically challenged hobo like me? Quite obviously, Devendra Banhart takes care of his beard. At least as much as Samson did of his hair. Sufficiently in any case for Euterpe to reign supreme within. And as if the precocious detention of musical genius wasn't enough to me, our man also seems to revel in necromancy; the crossed shadows of Robert Johnson, Nick Drake and John Fahey permanently float over the......
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DEVENDRA BANHART
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Kitty Magic | by Kristina FranciscoInterviewLast year, Devendra Banhart toured with Xiu Xiu mastermind Jaime Stewart, bringing his kinda weird/kinda cool folk music to indie rock masses everywhere. The two drove cross-country, took turns at the wheel, and made an unlikely but somehow understandable duo. Both make emotive music but in decidedly different ways. Stewart’s work is often a controlled chaos of instrumentation and personal, tormented, and sometimes violent words. Contrastingly, Banhart uses acoustic guitar, quivering, Nick Drake-like voice and intimate, gentle lyrics. This time around, Banhart took off on his own, touring in support of his sophomore effort, Rejoicing in the Hands, off Michael Gira’s (ex-Swans, now Angels of Light) Young God label. With the hype and fanbase growing, Banhart took a little bit of time to answer a couple of questions while in Portland on the second day of his tour. I’ve read you spent time as a drifter before settling down in New York. Did you find what you were looking for during that time? Were you looking for anything at all? I am still drifting! But not looking, simply drifting, getting used to nothing belonging to me, come with nothing, leave with something..... How did you......
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Devendra Banhart
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LOOP | by José Miguel Salazar Z.Emergente artista folk editado en Young Gods Rec Spanish + EnglishDevendra Banhart es un músico mitad americano, mitad venezolano, de sólo 23 años. Con dos grabaciones previas, el álbum "Oh Me Oh My... The Way the Day Goes by the Sun is Setting Dogs are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit" [2002] y el EP "The Black Babies (UK)" [2003], lanza ahora su primer registro de estudio producido por Michael Gira, ex líder de Swans. Lo anterior es relevante, dado que sus dos anteriores producciones habían sido grabadas en una casetera de cuatro pistas y en distintas grabadoras telefónicas, usando sólo una guitarra acústica y su peculiar voz. Su crudo folk, que recuerda a Mark Bolan acústico y a los olvidados Comus [aunque para algunos también es una suerte de nuevo Nick Drake], ha tenido un gran impacto, en parte por la precisa forma en que transmite emociones y por la atmósfera íntima y frágil que es capaz de producir. Estamos frente a un músico que, en oposición a las tendencias más consolidadas, desconfía de la tecnología para materializar sus ideas y de los discursos académicos del arte para fundamentar su obra, sobre la......