Vivian Girls - Memory - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

For fans of Brad Mehldau, Bobo Stenson, George Winston and Jazz! A genre-defying performer, dedicated educator, and omnivorous listener, Dan DeChellis has lived his musical vision for over 40 years, leveraging strict classical training into deep-dive explorations of modern classical improvisation, free improvisation, jazz, rock, and ambient music. After nearly posting a solo piano improvisation every day on his Youtube channel for the first 6 months of the lockdown, Dan decided it was time for another proper solo record. His first was released 25 years ago on the Sachimay Records tag. Many things have changed since then. Dan has been a professor at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA for the past 16 years where he directs the Moravian Improvised Music Ensemble and teaches a required class on Improvisation. InchBreathe InInch was recorded all in one sitting and released in the order recorded. Beginning piano studies at age 7, Dan earned bachelors and masters degrees in piano performance from Appalachian State University and Duquesne University, then spent a year studying improvisation with Paul Bley and Ran Blake at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC). In Boston and later New York, he released more than a half-dozen solo and group recordings on his own Sachimay Records tag; co-founded Brooklyn's Improvised and Otherwise Festival; performed at venues including the Knitting Factory, Tonic, CBGB's, and Sculler's Jazz Club; and collaborated with musicians including drummers Tatsuya Nakatani and Gerry Hemingway, saxophonists Bhob Rainey and Jack Wright, bassists Gene Perla and Reuben Radding, guitarists Philip Tomasic and Chris Forsyth, and the trio Chainworks with electronics player Brian Moran and percussionist Matt Hannafin.

Goat Girl - Goat Girl [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/06/2018

¡Simpatico! (Remastered and Expanded) gives Velocity Girl's long out-of-print 1994 sophomore album, ¡Simpatico!, an overdue refresh with a sparkling-fresh mastering job and a treasure trove of bonus tracks from the ¡Simpatico! Era. The original album sounds better than ever, and it's complemented by a full album of B-sides and rarities.Velocity Girl formed in 1989 or so at the University of Maryland outside Washington DC with guitarist Archie Moore (Black Tambourine), guitarist Brian Nelson (Black Tambourine), drummer Jim Spellman (Starry Eyes, Foxhall Stacks, High Back Chairs, Julie Ocean, Piper Club), bassist Kelly Riles (Starry Eyes), and singer Sarah Shannon (Starry Eyes, The Not It's). The band combined English-inspired noisy shoegaze fuzz with scrappy US indie rock and classic '60s-style pop songwriting. A killer single on Slumberland and non-stop touring grabbed the attention of the indie-rock cognoscenti, and soon after Velocity Girl signed a contract with Sub Pop on a car hood in Hoboken, New Jersey. After touring in support of their debut, Copacetic, the band spent the better part of a year coming up with a batch of songs for a second album. They had never worked that way before - having focused time, and a budget (from a tag!), to make an album that wasn't a self-produced, punk-rock studio thing was a fresh experience. Having played their new material for months in the noisy style of Copacetic, the band found themselves excited about the tunes, but trying to move away from the scrappy, amateur vibe of their previous records. And their influences were a bit different this time around less My Bloody Valentine and Wedding Present, more New Order. Somebody at Sub Pop connected the band with John Porter, the one-time Roxy Music member who had produced The Smiths, Billy Bragg, The Alarm, and a bunch of other 80's stuff. They met up on a tour stop in Los Angeles,