: ART / CRAFT DIVISION
CALM WIND, STARRY NIGHT
Debut Music from Mountain Lions
After leaving indie-pop group "The Lighthouse and the Whaler" and touring alongside Matt Pond, Jukebox the Ghost and Ra Ra Riot, songmaker/composer, Steven Diaz brings to bear a graceful and dynamic collection of soulful Americana. This six-sided introduction to his new project Mountain Lions begs, like a suncatcher, to be lifted up in the sunlight where a viewer has no choice but to gaze in delight, and lose track of all time and fear.
"The music itself is stunningly captivating. There's simply so much beauty there."
- Ghettoblaster Magazine
"For the past five years, Mountain Lions have been slowly and meticulously crafting songs of loss, longing and hope with the precision of a woodcarver."
- Divide and Conquer
For Fans of M. Ward, Gregory Alan Isakov, Sam Cooke, The Head And The Heart
GIVE ME ANYTHING
Debut Music from Caleb & Carolyn
Like any art form, song-craft demands equal parts discipline and daydream. The same can be said about love.
Newly married, Caleb and Carolyn Spaulding, wear experience and fiction on their sleeve in a stark debut - walking the wire between communion and calamity. The deep-digging narratives and journal entries that comprise "Give Me Anything," pit our wounded lovers against each other in one moment, then sew them softly back together in heart-bleeding harmony the next.
This opening chapter for the daring young couple proves that though they are new, by name and by nature, they are masters of their craft... and may have a good grasp on love as well.
"The tension in their music takes the same emotional toll as that of a great film. I need to know that the characters will survive, that the love will somehow conquer the fatal fractures between them... between us all."
- Airloom Founder, M. Moore
For Fans of John Moreland, The Civil Wars, Noah Gundersen, and Mandolin Orange
FIRST SONGS!
Debut Music from Matt Moore
Matt Moore smiles as he lifts his morning coffee to his chin, it's the kind of ornery grin that looks like he's getting away with something.
Maybe the big secret is his first collection of music to be shared with the public, which boasts an eccentric 20 tracks... recorded to tape.
"It was painstaking to track that many songs live," he says, "frustrating and full of little human imperfections, so really it was perfect!"
At the time of recording, Matt was squatting in the Appalachian Foothills of the Wayne National Forest, and preparing to move away from his beloved community in Athens Ohio. A small college town, full of hippies, hillbillies, and academics who all helped inform Matt's coming-of-age years, and relished his knack for writing damn good songs. It was these folks, and their home that Matt wanted to weave into the record. The warm tones of analog recording and those innately human touches throughout the album were an artistic choice. "I needed to capture more than lyrics and notes; I needed to memorialize this place and this time and these people."
Produced under the guidance of long-time Athenian and musical savant, Josh Antonuccio (Adam Torres, Vetiver, Sean Rowe), "First Songs!" is earning great reviews from its earliest listeners, and features the musical talents of over a dozen local farmers, restaurant owners, open-mic hosters, artists, conservationists and software developers. The record ranges from funny folk nonsense, to stirring spirituals, to expressionist psychedelia... but most importantly, it flies in the face of our “hit single” era of commodity music. Unapologetic, unrefined, and unconventional… this is young folk art at its finest.
For Fans of Michael Hurley, Tom Waits, Ben Howard, and Shakey Graves
Music & Iconography
The Art & Craft(s) of Kelly Latimore
Wendell Berry says that for him there is an ever-growing merger between what he has considered his art, his work, and his life. This blurring, this confluence, of love and language and labor is one that Kelly Latimore seems to make evident for any who happen upon him.
And you would have to happen upon him, for he is not seeking you out as a customer or an enabler of any sort. As far as we can tell, Kelly has created a dozen albums of music; some archived, some lost, some thrown into a fire in defiance of vanity. Kelly simply lives and thinks and creates... and when we're lucky he shares.
The art is always revelatory, always offering something hitherto unknown. It can make Latimore seem like an oracle. And maybe he is. Or maybe that is the function of art, purpose of being a human, and the benefit of community at all.
For Fans of Michael Nau, Sister Mary Grace Thul, Nate Hendricks, Robin Pecknold, Wilco
Cory Love
Albums from 2010 to Present
Cory plays and records music in his home.
He also works at a hospital.
That's all for now.
2010's debut, "Every Creature is Good: Songs on the Saints" is a remarkable invitation into the world of Cory Love. The songs are lovely bedroom odes that will make any listener smile and bob their head.