"Golden Apples of the Sun" compilation by Devendra Banhart, available direct from Arthur

“THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN”
curated and designed by DEVENDRA BANHART
(Arthur 0004)

Available direct from Arthur: the acclaimed 2004 compilation of current underground folk music, as selected by Devendra Banhart.

This is more than a compilation–it’s expertly sequenced and paced, like one long, slow flow of a particularly rich vibe. Liner notes are by the artists themselves, paying tribute to each other, all handlettered by Devendra, who also provides artwork on cover, back cover, sleeve, tray and the disk itself.

“Essential.” — Mojo, September 2004

“Sparkling.” — The Wire, July 2004

“8.6 (out of 10): [Its] sprawling landscape presents a persuasive case for the depth of a scene that seemingly sprung up (like mushrooms) overnight.” — Pitchfork, July 8, 2004

Track listing:

1. Vetiver (with Hope Sandoval) – “Angel’s Share” (from the “Vetiver” LP)
2. Joanna Newsom – “Bridges and Balloons” (from “The Milk-Eyed Mender” LP)
3. Six Organs of Admittance – “Hazy SF” (previously unreleased)
4. Viking Moses – “Crosses” (from “Crosses”)
5. Josephine Foster – “Little Life” (prev. unreleased home recording)
6. Espers – “Byss & Abyss” (from “Espers” LP)
7. Vashti Bunyan & Devendra Banhart – “Rejoicing in the Hands” (from the “Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress” LP)
8. Jana Hunter – “Farm, CA” (prev. unreleased)
9. Currituck Co. – “The Tropics of Cancer” (from “Ghost Man on First”)
10. White Magic – “Don’t Need” (from the Drag City EP)
11. Iron and Wine – “Fever Dream” (from “Our Endless Numbered Days” LP)
12. Diane Cluck – ” Heat From Every Corner” (from “Macy’s Day Bird” LP)
13. Matt Valentine – “Mountains of Yaffa” (previously unreleased)
14. Entrance – “You Must Turn” (prev. unreleased home recording)
15. Jack Rose – “White Mule” (from “Red Horse, White Mule”)
16. Little Wings – “Look at What the Light Did Now” (from “Light Green Leaves”)
17. Scout Niblett – “Wet Road” (from “Sweet Heart Fever”)
18. Troll – “Mexicana” (from “Pathless Lord”)
19. CocoRosie – “Good Friday” (from “La Maison de Mon Reve”)
20. Antony – “The Lake” (from “Live at Saint Olaye’s With Current 93”)


New music: "MLK" by The Entrance Band

livegreen

Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Entrance-Band-MLK.mp3%5D

Download: “MLK” —The Entrance Band (mp3)

“There’s a reason I sing/Because I want to hear freedom ring”

Dig it: essential message groove music from The Entrance Band‘s latest, available on 2xLP and cd through the good folks of Ecstatic Peace.

Jan 22 and 23, SF (Dogpatch): ECOTONES at lowerdeck

ecotones

lowerdeck Gallery features Ecotones – A Painted Windows Event

Where: 2295 3rd Street, San Francisco CA 94107 (Dogpatch)

When: January 22nd and 23rd (Friday and Saturday) two performances

Time: Festivities start at 8pm and go until they end

Painted Windows presents Ecotones, a curatorial collaboration between painters, filmmakers, writers and musicians revolving around the fleeting, ever-changing notion of home. An all-immersive environment sprung from a collage of individual takes, the exhibition will approach the idea of natural habitat through sculpture, painting, interactive installations, live music, language, diverse performances, and unique beverages. From Christy Chan’s films of insurgent wild life reclaiming Marin’s defunct military bases to Sonya Genel’s multi-layered paintings to a bathroom full of stuffed animals to a “shitty house,” Ecotones will present a latticework of fantastical wilderness and urban mythology.

Also:
-Experience an interactive ritual
-Sip some yerba mate cocktails
-Watch two films simultaneously
-Hear a concert by NewVillager who will debut songs from their upcoming self-titled album.
-Listen to the absurd language of an “absurd MC”
-Read a wall
-Draw on a wall

"The record age was just a blip": Brian Eno on the end of records

From a new interview published in The Guardian:

“I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.”

NO INFRASTRUCTURE, AT ALL

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/egalite-guaranteed/

Google Missing Persons Spreadsheet
http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/

iReport Search By Name
http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=381628

Reuters EIS
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/126373176384.htm
“Emergency Information Service is exclusively operating for and on behalf of earthquake survivors, using local languages, French and Creole. The service is free and global.”

Relief Efforts
http://www.trackernews.net/search/?s=HAITI
http://www.cidi.org/incident/haiti-10a/
http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti

Health + Sanitation Guides (Kreyol)
http://www.hesperian.org/publications_download.php
http://www.hesperian.info/assets/Where_There_is_no_Doctor_Creole.pdf
http://www.hesperian.info/assets/hesperian_wwhnd_haitian%20creole_2000.pdf

kreyol

Learn Kreyol
http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/?lang=ht
http://crisiscommons.org/wiki/index.php?title=Creole-French-English_Phrase_Dictionary_Wiki

Technical Volunteer Registry
http://dex.cidi.org/
http://www.ewb-usa.org/haiti.php

Importable Infrastructure : Who’s Where, Doing What
http://haiti-orgs.sahanafoundation.org/prod/or/organisation
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc108?OpenForm&emid=EQ-2010-000009-HTI&rc=2

Conditions
http://wfplogistics.org/haiti-earthquake-2010

Crisis Mapping
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/main
http://sitroom.ushahididev.com/

Crisis Commons [White Hat]
http://haiti.crisiscommons.org/
http://crisiscommons.org/wiki/index.php?title=Haiti/2010_Earthquake

Network Relief Kit (NRK)
http://www.nethope.org/impact/programs/
http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol19/?pg=46&pm=1
“NetHope members who have been active in our relief efforts firmly believe that NGOs on the ground require a lightweight “NetHope ICT Kit” they can carry in their baggage to provide instant communications from Day 1 onward. This kit must have the following features:”


U.S. Stops Deporting Haitians
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0113/Haiti-earthquake-US-stops-deporting-Haitians

Jubilee Act HR 4405 / Drop The Debt
http://www.one.org/us/actnow/drophaitiandebt/index.html
http://www.jubileeusa.org/jubilee-act.html

Inflatable Hospital En Route
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4165
Doctors Without Borders Cargo Plane Blocked From Landing in Port-au-Prince

No Medicines, Baby Born On Street

PREVIOUSLY ON SPECTRE :

HASTILY FORMED RELIEF NETWORKS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2006/08/17/strong-angel-iii-hastily-formed-networks/
TXTBANKNG THE UNBANKED
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/sms-banking-in-kenya/
ONE CELLPHONE PER CHILD
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/one-cellphone-per-child
KATRINA 2.0
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/katrina-20/
R U IN JAIL?
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/r-u-in-jail/

'SILENCE COUNTRY' by Conor Stechschulte

Conor Stechschulte graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 and embarked on a cross-country bicycle trip from the east coast in Virginia to the west coast in Oregon.  In each state, he photographed a “woods walk” where he would find a patch of woods usually somewhere close off the side of the road, walk in a straight line (going from east to west), and take a photograph every 3 to 5 steps.  Since coming home, he edited the photos down to one walk (consisting of anywhere from 10 to 16 images) per state and has begun to translate them into drawings.

Conor adds, “The drawings are done side by side, two at a time on pieces of 24 x 19″ bristol board.  Each drawing is about 9 x 6.5”.  There are 134 images to draw for the final Silence Country book, so going at the pace I am right now, it’ll probably be done somewhere around 2018.  Haw haw.”

This particular set is from Kentucky, outside of Bardstown. It was photographed right near an anonymous graveyard dating back to the civil war.

Conor underwent a similar walking/photographing/drawing process for a zine he did in 2008 titled “The Spirit World.”

Conor is a member of Closed Caption Comics, he plays in the band Witch Hat, and he lives in and helps run “Open Space” gallery in Baltimore.

(click on images to make them larger)

Silence Country 1 + 2Silence Country 3 + 4Silence Country 5 + 6Silence Country 7 + 8Silence Country 9 + 10Silence Country 11 + 12

New-mind jam: Woods Family Creeps — "Party in the Pines"

Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/woodsfamilycreeps.mp3%5D

Download: “Party In The Pines” — Woods Family Creeps (mp3)

WOODS FAMILY CREEPS, which is/are Woods in exploratory, long-form instro-mode mood, play two sets (8p, 1030p) in Brooklyn on January 18 at Monkeytown. Reservations at: http://www.monkeytownhq.com/reservations.html. Ooh, it looks like they’re sold out already. Well, lower the lights a bit, light one up and make do with the above jam. Healing tones for troubling times.

Woods: http://www.myspace.com/woodsfamilyband

Woodsist: http://www.woodsist.com

bloggy: http://rearhouse.blogspot.com/

JAY REATARD, 1980-2010

jayreatard

Above: Jay Reatard, gone far too soon

“Memphis musician Jay Reatard runs ‘out of time’; dies at 29” — news article at Memphis Commercial Appeal

October 2005 interview with Jay from the LARecord:

Jay Reatard was about 15 when he started the Reatards, who were the brightest young scum in the Memphis rock ‘n’ roll scene. After several frightening albums recorded on his famous broken four-track, he purchased some old keyboards and started a new band called the Lost Sounds, but they finally broke up and now Jay is back as a Reatard and playing some of the first songs he ever wrote. He speaks now while recovering from a 33-hour Greyhound ride to the West Coast to start the first tour…. Read on at LARecord