#mini50 records

[musicmakesyousmart]

The Silence Set - Teeth Out

Mini50 Records

2015

[vsmallflames]

Old Earth - A Wake in the Wells

Regular readers will probably know by now that we are big fans of Old Earth here at Wake the Deaf. A couple of months back we told you that Todd Umhoefer was preparing a new album, A Wake in the Wells, and thanks to the kind people at mini50 records, I've had the pleasure of spending the last few weeks getting to know it.

If you’re even vaguely familiar with Old Earth, then you’ll know that Todd Umhoefer is very much his own man. His influences range from modern-day hip hop to golden oldie pop songs, a blend which he builds on a foundation of experimental folk. Using looped guitars and sparse vocals, Umhoefer creates some of the most interesting and forward-facing art that's out there today. The album sleeve contains a quote from film soundtrack extraordinaire Bernard Herrmann, beginning with the line, “Musically I count myself as an individualist”. I'm not sure I could think of a better way than these seven simple words to sum up Umhoefer and his artistic goals.

The album consists of just five tracks (named simply 'Track 1', 'Track 2', etc.), but spans over 30 minutes, with each track shifting and morphing into a variety of guises. In fact, the liner notes show each track split into several component parts, each with a title of its own. These sections meld into one another like events in a dream, the transitions often surreally sudden and spontaneous but retaining an eerie kind of absurd logic. This novel song structure never feels redunant either. It is to Umhoefer's credit that each element always seems necessary and appropriate.

This non-conformity is illustrated perfectly on the opening track, an eleven minute behemoth which does everything but break the listener in gently. It kicks off with a section called ‘Well Abandonment’, an insistent, driven start of barely restrained guitar and minimal drum work, before the opening line of,

“I wanted walls, for something to push against.  I wanted waves, for something to row.”

Another stand-out, ‘Track 3’, starts as a sign on the horizon, a wisp of dark smoke against the blue-white sky. An ominous force gathers pace and momentum as it approaches, eventually hurtling forward in the furious motion of frantic guitar. Then the vocals are upon you:

“What the hell are these bells doing out?”

Closely followed by one of my favourite lyrical passages on the album:

"One night, I woke up from a nightmare One night, I woke up from the rain One night, I woke up from the house shook And one night I woke up from being alone"

This ominous demand is either a simple set of ambiguous statements or the documentation of some kind of personal epiphany. The track then morphs at around 4:00, a weird reverb-y disintegration paving the way for the slow-building urgency of ‘No Cerra, No’.

If you've read this far, then you have probably realised that A Wake in the Wells is not an album that’s going to hurry everyone to the dance floor. If you want toe-tapping sunniness or sing-along choruses then please move along. Good-time rock and roll this is not. Instead we get dynamic, instinctive music-making from a musician whose regard for “the rules” begins and ends with his own innate understanding of them.

This is an album to spend lots of time with. You need to let it wash over you, to become familiar with its dusty corners and idiosyncrasies. I find it difficult to like lots of experimental music, the super-cerebral stuff that you need an advanced maths qualification to understand. A Wake in the Wells is nothing like that. Yes Umhoefer experiments, but all the while he is focused on making something honest and true. I guess the experimentation is simply a means to an end, a way for him to attempt to convey his own personal messages.

I think what I'm trying to get at is that Old Earth's music is sincere. And I don't know about you, but sincerity is pretty important to me in art. In fact, I think it may be the most important thing of all. If I'm reading a book or watching a film or listening to an album, the one thing I want is for the artist to mean it. And I realised when listening to A Wake in the Wells over these last few weeks, goddamn does Umhoefer mean it. This is the man who last year (in an interview for WTD) said the killer line, "Fuck irony. I’m trying to make something to uplift myself, and it’s reassuring to me that other people can relate to it."

So I hope that it's pretty clear that I like this album a lot. It has drive and ambition and best of all it has heart. I think I’ll let Bernard Herrmann have the last word, his closing remarks capturing perfectly why I love this album (and Old Earth’s music in general) so very much:

“I am not interested in music, or any work of art, that fails to stimulate appreciation of life and, more importantly, pride in life…I believe that only music which springs out of genuine personal emotion is alive and important.”

You can order A Wake in the Wells right now via mini50 records. Please do, you won’t regret it.

P.S. Our American friends will be pleased to hear that Old Earth is currently on tour. You have four chances to see him this week:

Thurs. August 28th, 2014- Turntable (Jamestown, NC), w/ Twin Brother Fri. August 29th, 2014- Daisy Dukes (Nashville, TN), w/ Twin Brother Sat. August 30th, 2014- 27 Live (Evanston, IL), w/ Twin Brother Sun. August 31st, 2014- Club Garibaldi's (Milwaukee, WI) ALBUM RELEASE w/ Twin Brother & Joe Crockett

P.P.S. The super-cool cover art is by Jennifer Mehigan.

[vsmallflames]

Old Earth prepares new album

Perennial WTD fave Old Earth (aka Tod Umhoefer) has been working hard on a new album entitled A Wake in the Wells. It's being released by the lovely/great/amazing people over at mini50 Records.

The press release promises "an album of mature focus and intensity" and a record "propelled by innovation, competition, and a sense of hustle more associated with hip hop than folk rock". Like previous Old Earth releases, A Wake in the Wells will feature contributions from some of Milwaukee's finest musicians, including regular collaborators Nick Berg and Chris Porterfield (of Field Report) and Jon Meuller of Volcano Choir.

The album is due for release on the 31st August. You can pre-order it now via mini50, either as a download, or 12" vinyl. This is not the work of some multi-national major label, so pre-orders are vital to cover the costs of production. The album is also guaranteed to be great, so grab yourself a copy of the vinyl, and everyone is a winner.

Expect to hear a lot more from us about this album in the coming months.

[milwaukeerecord]

Old Earth brings Milwaukee a belated Scottish souvenir

              If you're familiar with experimental folk force Old Earth, you're probably still reeling from the semi-recent release of the 13-minute masterpiece All Kill. In addition to quickly gaining steam locally, Todd Umhoefer’s creative vehicle caught the attention of mini50, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based record label that has put out each of Old Earth’s five rapid-fire releases since 2013’s Small Hours EP.

Last fall, Umhoefer flew to Scotland. Based on the new Old Earth tour video, it wasn’t so much a European vacation as a full-fledged work trip.

While across the pond, Umhoefer recorded a studio session, played a few club shows and did a series of field recordings—one of which was done as a graffiti artist painted a badass Old Earth logo on a wall in Edinburgh.

The recordings have been combined into a tour album, Milwaukee To Edinburgh, 2013. The release was given to backers of a crowdfunding campaign that helped facilitate the trip, but it was made available to non-Kickstarter backers earlier this week, too. This unique recording should be enough to hold fans in both continents over until the next Old Earth release, which is slated for August. Umhoefer plans to go to Scotland again this fall.

[losttribesound]

Beautiful video presentation for the new Matthew Collings (aka Sketches for Albinos, Graveyard Tapes) album. Well worth checking out this release. This guy can do no wrong with his music and the packaging is top notch!

Out now on Mini50 Records, grab one of these limited copies, Here

[thenewobjective]

Sketches for Albinos ~ Fireworks and the Dead City Radio

Sketches for Albinos ~ Fireworks and the Dead City Radio

Sketches for Albinos has been quiet for four years, but Matthew Collings has not; he’s been recording under his own name.  Fireworks and the Dead City Radio is the artist’s piece of unfinished business, a deeply personal record that fell into the abyss in 2010.  In the ensuing years, the album has been heard only in fragments on Soundcloud, but never in full.  ”Don’t forget,” Collings sings on…

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[rizomecorp]

Now Wakes The Sea - Fluoxetine Morning

This is a re-issue of Fluoxetine Morning, the debut album by Scottish musician Now Wakes the Sea consisting of psychedelic folk songs infused with elements of drone, ambient, and musique concréte, written and recorded throughout 2011 in bedrooms and boxrooms, in Glasgow's labyrinthine Mitchell Library, and in studios used by The Twilight Sad, Belle & Sebastian, and Beyoncé.

[vsmallflames]

Interview: Old Earth

Milwaukee's Old Earth has been a real favourite of ours over the last few months. After including More Wrung In The Wrong on our list of Best Free Music in 2011, this year we have featured both a low place at The Old Place and Small Hours. Now we have been fortunate enough to have a chat with Todd Umhoefer about all things Old Earth.

some of these Limbs, yeah, the glue's still wet by Old Earth

3) For me, many Old Earth songs are cinematic, not in way that the word is often used (you know, big orchestral sounds and over-production) but in that they conjure imagery. This is very difficult to properly describe but the sounds have an underlying sense of action or violence that produces pictures or events without the need for words. Maybe it is because the music is so psychological, with abstract sounds and phrases rather than a traditional narrative.  Does film have any impact on your work? Or is this just a consequence of releasing your mind through your music? Film has a huge impact on my work- movies are about pacing and dynamics, creating and changing a mood in an instant, and marrying words and images to sound. I'd say that has more to do with my work than any other medium. I even think of certain riffs or words as characters, because they recur and represent a time, place, or person to me. When I do recordings, I put myself in the role of director, composer, and most often, curator. I'm also doing more scoring for other people's film work, and it feels very natural. 4) The process of writing music such as this is really interesting to me. I find the idea of sitting down with the intention of putting together a song that will eventually sound organic and fully intended overwhelming in the extreme. I can see how people sit and write traditional folk songs, with maybe a poem or a story set to guitar strumming, but when the instrumentation plays such an important, visceral role I find it hard to imagine someone sitting down and working it out. How do you assemble something so convincing from the basic units of notes and words? Do you focus equally on the lyrics and the music? Or are the words governed by the music (or vice versa)? Well, you have to bear in mind that I'm never starting from scratch. I have riffs and words and half-formed songs that I've been playing on for years, and I don't have rules about one element governing another. For me, the song is the basic unit, and the riffs and words arrange themselves around it. Patiently living with the songs will tease out what they want to be… Writing never happens the same way twice, and it's best for me to think of it as magic and leave it at that. I've found that working on a few songs at once is really useful because they innately speak to each other, and the motifs become inherent. And, sometimes, you have to write three (or more) to get the one you want. Sometimes a song will spring from practicing an older one, or trying to play someone else's. Writing is constant, though. Singing with a guitar is only part of the process… As I'm doing a chore, running errands, or riding the bus, I'm working in my mind or on paper. I don't think I can completely isolate the process from myself and describe it, it's just what I do.

1 by old earth

5) I once heard Damien Jurado speak on his writing process, something I’ve mentioned before on the blog, where he stated that songs always exist in some unknowable place within an artist, and that there is a spontaneous moment where each song is realised and takes form. Is this the case for you? Do songs tumble from your mind in something like a cohesive manner? Or is it more of an arduous process of trial and error, experimenting with different things? Some seem to pop out fully-formed, but again, that's only because I've played guitar basically every day for over half my life. You could argue that every song I make now has taken my entire life to write, rendering any spontenaity an illusion. Trial and error plays a role, and it can be challenging at times, but I'm lucky if music is the most arduous part of my life. Cohesive moments are rare and can't be counted on, so I just keep working. As for what Mr. Jurado is saying, I instead think of my songs as existing somewhere outside of myself, and I'm just witnessing and interpreting them. 6) For me there is a duality in your music, two aspects which combine to form a very convincing whole. The instrumentation represents the atavistic emotions and sensations, the instinctive things like fear and joy and unease, and the words are the complex thought, the reasoning that tries to bind the first category together into something that can be understood or shared. The music and lyrics together form something that is very human. Is this something you ever consider? Or is it a by-product of writing your mind? I don't think reason enters into it, especially with the lyrics. They're intentionally vague, contradictory, and sometimes irrational. I like homonyms and multiple interpretations- sometimes the lines are a conversation, sometimes narration, and sometimes simply a human voice needed to be present and it felt good to sing there. Music is inhuman if it isn't saying "I love everything and it all makes sense" one moment and then "I'm confused and hateful" the next. The duality is more honest about the experience of being alive.

Added Verse by Old Earth

7) In our review of your album we included a quote where you essentially say that you take risks in order to make your art, and that pleasing people is not at the forefront of your thinking when trying to create something true to yourself. I read an interview with the Steinberg Principle where you go on to say that it is easy to pad yourself against criticism by being ironic. This remark brought to mind an essay by David Foster Wallace on TV and literature where he basically says that whole generations have grown up into superficial/empty people because they have been continually pumped full of ironic and clever TV characters who make fun of everything to appear ‘cool’. He pointed out that cynicism and irony can only ever be destructive, and truly brave art will stop poking fun at things and be itself, however hideously revealing that may be. Do you think this applies to music too, where it’s maybe not as clear as Family Guy or The Simpsons or a Mark Leyner novel? I’m thinking of artists such as yourself versus the current trend of ‘folk’ bands. Overall, much of what's popular is very sad and shallow to me, and I don't need that kind of trash in my life. I'm not worried about any current trend because I've seen so many of them come and go. The joke's on those bands, really. They'll look back and feel foolish for dressing up and behaving that way. Fuck irony. I'm trying to make something to uplift myself, and it's reassuring to me that other people can relate to it. 8) Finally, could you name 4-5 artists that you are currently listening too? They could be brand new or decades old, whatever you are enjoying at the moment. My lady plays a lot of 60's country and punk, I love Golden Oldies, I always have Gucci Mane in my headphones, and I couldn't fairly list all my friends who are doing music that excites me. Milwaukee is an amazing place to be right now. The stuff that I've bought on bandcamp and shows up in the "collection" tab has a lot of good suggestions. To better answer your question, though, the last month has been a lot of Drake's Take Care, Fabolous's The Soul Tape 2, J. Cole's Truly Yours 2, and as for rock stuff, Ladyhawk's No Can Do is ruling my world.

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If you want to get some Old Earth music then head on over to his Bandcamp page. Mini50 Records have put out Small Hours, and a low place at The Old Place is now available on vinyl.

Also, in some strange twist of fate, Old Earth is playing with Small Sur and Peals, bands we featured just last Friday, this Tuesday (11th June '13). If you are in the Milwaukee area then you would be silly to miss it. More information can be found here.