Articles
Death Blues
Questionnaire II

Albums
36
Daniel Bachman
Blevin Blectum
Ulises Conti
Ian William Craig
Dakota Suite & Sirjacq
Death Blues
Yair Etziony
Fade
Hammock
Imagho & Mocke
Kassel Jaeger
John Kannenberg
Martin Kay
Kein
Kontakt der Jünglinge
Akira Kosemura
Land Observations
Klara Lewis
Oliver Lieb
Lightfoils
Machinefabriek
Nikkfurie of La Caution
Pitre and Allen
Pjusk
Michael Robinson
Sawako
Seasurfer
Slow Dancing Society
Tender Games
Tirey / Weathers
Tohpati
Tokyo Prose
The Void Of Expansion
wild Up
Yodok III
Russ Young

Compilations / Mixes
Dessous Sum. Grooves 2
Silence Was Warm Vol. 5
Under The Influence Vol. 4

EPs / Cassettes / Mini-Albums / Singles
Belle Arché Lou
Blind EP3
Blocks and Escher
Dabs
DBR UK
Fracture
Sunny Graves
Ligovskoï
Mako
Paradox & Nucleus
Pye Corner Audio
Sawa & Kondo
Slpwlkr
Swoon
Toys in The Well
Versa
Marshall Watson

Wes Tirey / Andrew Weathers: Split
Scissor Tail Records

This forty-three-minute split release on Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Scissor Tail Records by Wes Tirey and Andrew Weathers makes for an interesting study in comparison, especially when Tirey's two pieces are in the country folk-blues tradition and Weathers' single long-form setting extends the folk sound into drone-styled territory.

The very titles of Tirey's pieces—“My Grandfather's 12 Gauge” and “Requiem for Pistol Pete Maravich”—suggest strong ties to country folk-blues, something evidenced by his breezy finger-picking the moment the first piece begins kicking up dust. In weaving together multiple layers of acoustic guitar playing, Tirey builds up a dense wall-of-sound during the opening track's eleven-minute run and keeps things interesting by alternating between restful and uptempo passages. The faint trace of a distant locomotive inaugurates “Requiem for Pistol Pete Maravich,” which Tirey then takes up with sunny picking delivered at the pace of a relaxed gallop and with low-slung accents thrown in for good measure. As with the first piece, his second moves through a number of episodes, some delivered at a rapid pace and others slower and wistful by comparison. One comes away from his pieces thinking of Tirey as a story-teller, albeit one sharing his sagas using instrumental means.

As if to immediately accentuate the contrast between their respective contributions, Weathers, hailing from North Carolina, opens his twenty-minute “Stay 100” with a synthesizer-generated drone and only brings guitar into it as the two-minute mark approaches. Unlike Tirey's pieces, Weathers' largely hews to a single mood, one whose peaceful character encourages reflection on the listener's part. He also plays electric guitar on the piece, a move that gives it a different quality by downplaying the folk association of the acoustic. Peaceful it might be, but “Stay 100” isn't devoid of activity, as Weathers amps up the intensity by overlaying the droning undercurrent with an intricate web of strums, bass tones, and country-tinged picking. As different as the contributions by Tirey and Weathers are on this fine gathering, they're not worlds apart either, as a raw drone can be heard twanging through the background of “My Grandfather's 12 Gauge.”

August-September 2014