Three Queens in Mourning, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Hello Sorrow – Hello Joy (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 50:11 minutes | 664 MB | Genre: Indie Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Textile Records
This is what happens when you invite Alasdair Roberts (Appendix Out) , Jill O’ Sullivan (Jill Lorean) and Alex Neilson (Trembling Bells, Alex Rex) to gather and sing work from Will Oldham’s book of collected lyrics, ‘Songs of Love and Horror’. The latter – best known as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – has long had a startling reputation for the kind of atmospheric songs and songwriting that transcends the ages, with the meditative ‘Stablemate’, used to open this exceptional special release, a case in point. The sense of foreboding atmosphere doesn’t even wane when other artists get involved with their own interpretation. Of course things don’t all sound so hypnotic and spellbinding. ‘Lost Blues’ is the kind of Americana that has been made for eons, and still isn’t tired. ‘I See A Dark’ is a beautiful piece of violin-heavy vintage folk, and ‘Wild Dandelion’ closes on a campfire dance high.
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Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:04 minutes | 788 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Drag City
Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You (due August 11th via Domino) presents simply – an album made as it was meant to be heard, in a room. The sound of people together – a sound we’d so recently feared that we’d lost – playing, communing, strings and wood and keys and voices singing. KSWDY presents simply, and is sung along easily and happily with in time BUT –is it family portrait or fairy tale? How does it think the world was made, and will end? Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You was recorded in Louisville by Nick Roeder, featuring Sara Louise Callaway on violin, Kendall Carter on keys, Elisabeth Fuchsia on viola and violin, Dave Howard on Mandolin, Drew Miller on saxophone and Dane Waters’ voice. The presence of so many local players and music educators in the band lends not only to a flow of moments so fluidly encompassing of a wide range of musics from classical to Japanese acid folk and elsewhere, but perhaps even more importantly, to the sense of community, heredity and the triumph of inheritance that is the marrow and life blood of this music.
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Matt Sweeney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Superwolves (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:39 minutes | 436 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Domino Recording Co
Where once was Superwolf, now roam Superwolves, the new album and demon spawn of Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, released physically on June 18th. The songs that make up Superwolves, the duo’s second album and first since 2005’s Superwolf, go boldly into undreamed-of places, and go deep, as Matt and Bonny take all the musics they know to make songs that penetrate. In classic Garcia-Hunter style, Sweeney and the ‘Prince’ first work separately, finding a path to each other in their solitary imaginings. Bonnie lyric sets delivered to Matt spark Sweeney’s guitar brain; chords and a melody are shaped, recorded fast and loose and sent back to the Prince, then the two parties meet up to sing, stitch, strengthen and finally perform them together in front of a small unsuspecting audience. Then new sets of lyrics are sent, animated and played in a high wire style until the shared songs and experiences are ready to commit to record. This is just the beginning of their fusion process, as words imply vocalizations to counter and support, and guitar lines suggest harmonic fields to subtly push into. In this process, a new creature grows out of the old one. In this name of this partnership, the guitar shares an open and fluid space with the vocals, the voices sing with the guitars-every moment in the life of Superwolves is an extravaganza, guided only by its need.
Read more![Bill Callahan, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Blind Date Party (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/09/03/rv3a8mx8wmrsc_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Bill Callahan, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Blind Date Party (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:30:12 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Drag City Records
During lockdown, these two titans of left-field US songcraft collaborated remotely with a vast roll call of other musicians, recording cover versions by fellow masters (Leonard Cohen, Yusuf Islam) as well as their labelmates. A smattering of reworked originals includes electrifying takes on Callahan’s Our Anniversary and Oldham’s Arise, Therefore; the talents involved range from Cretan lute player George Xylouris to Australian guitarist Mick Turner (Dirty Three). The majority of these 19 tracks are loose online; Blind Date Party corrals them for the artefact buyer.
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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – I Made A Place (2019/2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 43:40 minutes | 632 MB | Genre: Alternative, Indie
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Domino Recording Co
“In recent years, the whole world of recorded music, in the way that such music is conceived, perceived, recorded, released and distributed, has been atomized. I tried holding my breath, waiting for the storm to pass, but this storm is here to stay and its devastation is our new landscape. What else is a person to do except what he knows and feels, which for me is making records built out of songs intended for the intimate listening experiences of wonderful strangers who share something spiritually and musically? I started working on these songs thinking that there was no way I was going to finish them and record and release them. This was a constructive frame-of-mind that protected the songs until this frightening moment when we let go of them and give them to you.”
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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The Letting Go
Artist: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy | Album: The Letting Go | Style: Folk Rock, Acoustic, Indie Rock | Year: 2006 | Quality: DVD-Audio (MLP 5.1 96kHz/24Bit, Dolby AC3 5.1 48kHz/16Bit) | Bitrate: lossless | Tracks: 15 | Size: ~3.28 Gb | Recovery: 3% | Covers: in archive | Release: Drag City Records (dc420-5.1), 2006 | Note: Not Watermarked
DVD-Audio. The Letting Go is an overwhelming undertaking. As mentioned, there are strings lovely charts that do so much more than just trace chord changes up and down the neck. Arrangements by Ryder McNair and Nico Muhly are threaded throughout the record, augmenting a simple quintet players to provide a sixth sense. The deceptive nature of his band is on display from the top. Filthy Jim White is known far and wide for his resource behind the drum kit and he proves it song after song, with sensitivity that provokes dynamic variety from skins, an acoustic depth to the room. Paul Oldham’s bass is a feeling accompaniment to Bonny’s guitar, played with brotherly clairvoyance and constancy. Young Emmett Kelly’s clean electric guitar lines roam within the web and suddenly shine, are blues and folk and r’n’b in shifting turn, guilelessly tactic and soulfully expressive. And up front with Bonny is the bewitching Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables. Her vocal flights on those records can hardly prepare one for the intimacy and empathy of her harmonies and other voices on The Letting Go. (more…)
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