PETER J. WOODS & ANDREW WEATHERS "A Whole New Alphabet" C74 (Flag Day Recordings)

Peter J. Woods & Andrew Weathers are both wildly prolific and adventurous in their respective outputs, but not exactly two peas in a pod, genre-wise. PJW, generally running with the harsher, noisier crowd, plays this release markedly tame…almost sonorous…almost, in comparison to his usual MO of power-electronics. Same goes for the polar opposite, Andrew Weathers, a tried &true guitar-soli/folk musician who, while often employing electronic accompaniments to enhance his stringed noodlery, pretty much always keeps the tones bright & airy, harmonious.

So, naturally, they decided to smash their heads together & explore uncharted (&unchartable?) narrative soundscapes, much in the same vein as Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt did with their legendary (must-hear!) collaboration, "A Meeting by the River", over a quarter of a century ago, which sought to rhythmically destroy xenophobia by sonically reenacting a Rumi poem through "East & West" instrumental dialogue "unhindered by the rules of grammar*".

Bear with me here. I'm not saying that PJW & AW are bridging any social gaps or anything, but they do one HELL of a job bringing their own well-developed skill-sets to the table and complimenting the other's sonic posits with their own finely-honed flavors of knob-tweaking wizardry, thematic teasings, modulation (of modular moods, dudes!), & uncompromising drive.

The 1.25 hour story was recorded live, with each artist's contribution captured & isolated to a separate channel, so headphones'll deliver a wildly different experience than your stereo. Great for long walks (listen twice!) or drawing.

*K. Alexander quote taken from liner notes of AMbtR

https://flagdayrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/a-whole-new-alphabet
and/or
https://peterjwoods.bandcamp.com/
http://andrewweathers.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

ANDREW WEATHERS “Mojave Between Ludlow and Needles” (Full Spectrum)

We were somewhere in the Mojave, between Ludlow and Needles, when the drugs began to take hold.

That’s the start, anyway, of this #blessed adventure, packed Cadillac El Dorado convertible kicking up dust on the California highway, top down, blue sky blazing in unbearable vividness. Andrew Weathers does a similar thing, but with music instead of a car, capturing the hot, arid California of romantic imagination. His sparse guitar plucks are each individual breath you inhale, heating your chest in the daytime and freezing it at night. The more you drive, the deeper the landscape and the music penetrate you until you perceive them as one. The landscape has particularly inspired Weathers, as Mojave is “a love letter of sorts to a particular hill in the midst of the Mojave Desert’s expansive wastes.” It’s also part of Full Spectrum’s Editions Littlefield series, “which explores notions of intentional communities and progressive living.” There is nothing more progressive or “living” than baking under the sun or gazing up at the stars from a wilderness locale, where you can experience the beauty and the harshness all at the same time. Must stop here – this is bat country.

Weathers handles an array of instruments on this release, combining guitar, banjo, synth, organ, and other sundry items for an improvisational tour-de-folk, tunes light enough to be blown away like tumbleweed on the desert breeze. That charming highway strip bisects pure distance, and the tracks of Mojave empty into the atmosphere to fill the space. Breathe again, what’s on the wind enters not only your mouth and nose, but your ears and eyes as well for complete sensory engagement. It takes you places – even sitting here at my desk, I’m wandering through wastelands in my head, unable to separate my imagination from Andrew Weathers’s compositions. I welcome the hitchhikers I come across while on my sojourn, because they’re people too, and I’m not afraid of them or their intentions even if sometimes they do look like a tripped-out, blond Tobey Maguire. That’s just part of the free association, not remotely meaningful. Just inhabiting, yeah, this particular segment of three-dimensional space. Nothing but the music and the scenery to keep me company, to comfort and confound me with equal measure. Gonna get lost in it here.

What drugs? I’m high on life, man.

Andrew Weathers

Full Spectrum

--Ryan Masteller

ANDREW WEATHERS “I Am Happy When I Am Moving” C40 (Constellation Tatsu)

Andrew Weathers’s explorative output has been a consistent blend of beauty and serenity over the past six years, from overtone worshipping organic minimalism to lo-fi, humble folk-ishnesses, releasing material under his own name, as well as a plethora of other projects.

This most recent offering finds him at his most meditative and wise -as is par for the course for how CT releases go- and AW here crafts mantras of American primitive bent, both electric and steel string acoustic (a la Steffan Basho-Junghans’s ‘Late Summer Morning’ plodding meanderings) with accompaniments of Newer Age-y shifting swells of droning synth, organ, electronic manipulations and field recordings, as well as the occasional banjo embellishment. The focal points trade off seamlessly, like relay runners in slow motion, under water.

Honestly, I’ve listened to this album about ten times now and have started to assign subjective moods, mostly saccharine/montage-y, to the half dozen or so movements, especially those that re-visit the main theme/riff of the album’s opener, and I could easily see this being a b-side soundtrack to the fucking Wonder Years. Maybe Fred Savage is Andrew Weathers’s spirit animal?

http://andrewweathers.com/

and/or

http://www.ctatsu.com/portfolio/i-am-happy/

- - Jacob An Kittenplan