Nino Rojo

Devendra Banhart

Nino Rojo is the companion album to Rejoicing In The Hands, which was released earlier this year. It is culled from the same sessions. It is not a series of out-takes, or extra tracks. It is essentially CD #2 of a double album (in fact both these CDS are being released as a double vinyl album as well). As mentioned in the press release for Rejoicing In The Hands, Devendra had SO MANY songs, and of such consistently high caliber, that it was impossible to edit down the material to a single album. So, we decided to release 2 albums of his new songs in the space of a year. The response to Rejoicing has been overwhelming. In fact, as a small label, it’s almost impossible to keep up with it. What can I say? This kid is so amazingly magical, unique, genuine and talented that people just gravitate naturally to his music.

Not only does my best friend’s GRANDMOTHER relate to it, but my hard-ass “experimental music” friends also enthuse about it, as well as a few “purist” country/bluegrass friends of mine. He emanates joy, generosity, a whimsical imagination, really superb (and increasingly so) guitar playing, lyrical complexity, and an absolutely one-of-a-kind voice. It has been my immense privilege to meet him when he was not yet 21 years old - an exploding bag of crazy thoughts and dreams – and now to see him just a few short years later focused, his talent increasing exponentially, and receiving the attention he deserves. He’s one of a kind. This is a rare case where the “hype” is justified. TO CLARIFY: we sent out some cds, took out a few ads, and the response took care of itself – all that was left to us as a label was to try to keep up with it. We certainly have no power of persuasion in the music industry!!! Basically, YOU – people in the press, in radio, retail etc., and most of all a hugely increasing base of FANS – i.e. people who just respond honestly to his music – have made this happen. Nino Rojo has a few more “orchestrated” songs than Rejoicing does, but that’s more by co-incidence than anything else. Again, they hopefully add color/context to the songs. In the end, they weren’t strictly necessary at all. Everything was there on tape when he performed the songs. This CD contains a video of Devendra and his friends performing the song “At The Hop” live (and somewhat “psychedelicized” ) in a grassy field somewhere in northern California, dandelions flitting in the wind – ha ha! “At The Hop” was co-written with Devendra’s friend Andy Cabic from the band Vetiver, and they perform a duet of it on the regular cd version. The album opens with a cover of the Ella Jenkins song “Wake Up, Little Sparrow.” There’s 16 little gems on this album. Go to it, and enjoy.

- Michael Gira/Young God Records

These recordings were produced by Gira/Banhart

“ Rejoicing in the Hands establishes Banhart as a major voice in new folk music. Not only does it improve on the promise of his earlier releases; it effortlessly removes the listener from the context of the recording. That is, it doesn't seem like an album so much as a collection of road hymns and journals, and small tributes to smaller pleasures. If some people miss the appeal of this stuff in an attempt to digest it as any other product, all the better knowing Banhart will probably keep on rejoicing until forever.” –Pitchforkmedia.com/Dominique Leone, March 17th, 2004

“…This music is simply rendered, to be sure, but unspeakably profound and mercurial; it's funny, warm, heartbreaking, and evocative of another place and time… Banhart's music is utterly unselfconscious and poetic. Rejoicing in the Hands is a whole — each song an inseparable part of an offering for listeners to be, quite literally, enchanted and even awed by.” — Thom Jurek/allmusic.com

"...If he doesn't slide off the rails, just yo u watch --he'll prove to be one of this century's musicians who matter. " - The Houston Press

“…Banhart is only 21, and "Rejoicing in the Hands" is only his second album, but he's already a legend, and those who have been exposed to his music tend to speak of him with reverence and awe …vocally, he's his own man… Like Jeff Buckley, Banhart, without a trace of self-consciousness, does things with his voice that would sound absurd attempted by anyone else, and he makes them work by virtue of unshakable artistic conviction…”

- salon.com/Thomas Bartlett

“…Honestly, the record is destined to change more than a few lives this year; it’s the sound of a soul in love with the world, and love, and the art form of songs, and Banhart is one of the most convincing performers around...” – TIME OUT NY

“ Devendra Banhart's new album is as majestic as his first. Better even. Simply put, it is one of the best records you could hope to hear all year…” - Othermusic.com/MK

“…The last time such a prodigious talent came on the scene was when Jeff Buckley released his first album, perhaps a fine reference point for the ambition and ability at play here; but Banhart — less refined but more audaciously gifted — sings his own song, and seems blissfully oblivious to the idea that anyone might be listening. But, soon, many will be. “ - London Times/Stevie Chick

“Oh Me Oh My..., Devendra Banhart’s 2002 debut, was the work of a madman. It was as though someone slipped a four-track and an acoustic guitar through the bars at Bellevue and said, “Play, man, play.” The troubled troubadour’s second album is as peculiar as its straitjacket-folk predecessor, but this time out, it’s actually accessible… Banhart now follows a skeletal structure of gently plucked chords, augmented with delicate touches of cello, piano and violin. It’s a mesmerizing journey through the dark heart of Brooklyn’s lost boy. “ A. Parks/MAGNET

“ When I first heard some recordings by Devendra Banhart over a year ago, I didn't realize that I would be listening to a musical revolution. His first album was raw and earnest. It was a home recording. It was a diamond in the rough. Now we have the first real album. "Rejoicing” is the great Devendra Banhart album that we have been waiting for… This is an amazing record all the way through. This is a man to see live and buy all his records. When many musical fads will have faded, I will still be listening to Devendra Banhart. A total original.” - SF BURNING

“ Banhart's bizarro press interviews and onstage antics have earned as much attention as his seemingly endless catalogue of fractured acoustic narratives and blues miniatures… Casually referencing early Marc Bolan, Bryter Layter-era Nick Drake and a clutch of loping Morricone film scores, Banhart wraps his songs in a gorgeously quavering warble that seems lifted right off some blues mama's dusty 78. A nearly flawless set of left-field folk.” - Bob Mehr/MOJO

“…Banhart assembles his delicate and whimsical folk songs with the naivety of a three-year-old at play. And so while his songs are as earnest as soil, they're also as beautiful and joyous as spring in full bloom… But what really makes Banhart's second full-length album such a life-enriching listen is the all-encompassing sincerity of 'Rejoicing In The Hands'. Banhart makes music that could charm the birds from the trees such is the uncomplicated beauty of his songs. Devendra Banhart is a fucking genius. Honest. “ James Jam/NME

“ The intimacy the recording session brings to the album is simply striking. Listen closely and you'll hear cicadas in the background, the creak of floorboards… Banhart gives himself so wholly and so without artifice or posture, that even the most jaded of listeners can't help but be awed. Simply, Rejoicing in the Hands is one of the best albums of the year. “ - Kevin Jagernauth/POPMATTERS.COM

With long hair, bushy beard, no shirt for his stick-figure upper body, sandals and patched jeans, he came onstage talking enthusiastically about how his set would end in a "family jam." And his set did indeed result in a group singalong. But forgive him for that: with his twitchy, laserlike energy, Mr. Banhart, 23, seems like a brilliant young hobo who needs to connect. His songs are weird, animist dreams of nature and love, over intricate guitar fingerpicking. In one short song after another, read off of a torn paper shopping bag, he swung from meticulously composed and soothing to half-crazy raving to a totally credible original folk song in Spanish…” Ben Ratliff/NY TIMES

“ Like some Transcendentalist cross between English folksinger Donovan and Delta bluesman Tommy Johnson, this young neo-hippie singer-songwriter plies his sweet, high, vibrato-dipped vocal cords in the service of mini-mysteries that ricochet between such notions as God-like omniscience and the playful deconstruction of the human form… And when Banhart worries his guitar notes and spins a playful tune over a drone in "Tit Smoking" (an instrumental, by the way), some parallels between his playing and Barrett’s are obvious. What’s also obvious is that nobody else is making music quite like this today.” – Ted Drosdowski/ BOSTON PHOENIX