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Harvest Records presents TRANSFIGURATIONS 2009: Part Two
Featuring The Books, Mount Eerie
& Villages
Schedule
Doors open at 4:30 PM
Villages: 5:15 - 5:45 PM
Mount Eerie: 6:15 - 7:00 PM
The Books: 7:30 - 8:30 PM
August 15
5:15 pm
The Books emerged in June 2002 with the release of their first album Thought for Food, after two years of working on and off in makeshift studios in New York, Los Angeles, Andover MA, and Hot Springs NC. To The Books’ total surprise the album received rave reviews throughout the independent music community and worldwide press. Though The Books are hard to categorize they are often pressed in interviews to categorize themselves. It took them almost as long as the making of their album to come up with this remotely suitable answer: blipworld / fakegrass / speedblues / chamberclick / eccentrock / country&eastern / glitch post-anything music with samples, closely followed by “food band”. In late 2002 The Books took up residence in the quiet post-industrial hamlet of North Adams, MA and began carving out a new album, which was released in October 2003 as The Lemon of Pink again to worldwide acclaim. The main difference from Thought for Food is its greater coherence and more intimate character, due chiefly to the fact that the entire album was composed in a tiny pantry adjoining the kitchen of their apartment over a continuous period of six months. Immediately after completing The Lemon of Pink, The Books created their website (www.thebooksmusic.com) and rehearsed a one-off show which was performed in October 2003 at the Third Coast Audio Festival in Chicago before – again to their great surprise – a very enthusiastic audience. At that time they also collaborated with veteran radio maker Gregory Whitehead on the 90-minute radio play “The Loneliest Road,” commissioned by BBC3, which went on to win the Sony Academy Gold Award in the drama category in May 2004. With a lot of favorable word of mouth and critical buzz from the first two records, the Books relocated again in winter of 2004 and recorded in an old Victorian home in North Adams, MA. With the release of Lost and Safe in April of 2005, the Books prepared to tour with their unique blend of samples and acoustic music.The band is currently recording their latest album; tentatively scheduled for a 2009 release.
“...in every aspect, from the what is surely the best production heard on any album this year to the most intricate subtleties of the compositions themselves, The Books, The Lemon of Pink strides confidently forward, not content to simply be musique-concrete background noise, but to create a remarkable listening experience, and it succeeds. Without question, it succeeds.” – Pitchfork (#2 record of 2003!)
The music is similarly unknowable, in the sense that it's difficult to classify. Musicians famously hate to be 'put into a box'; well, if more bands sounded quite as original as The Books, the practice would likely cease. If this record is the product of any sort of 'scene,' it's not one I've heard of. Thought for Food is going to sit comfortably in my collection in its own little category, a small world unto itself. - Pitchfork
The Microphones was the alias of Anacortes, WA-based lo-fi psych-pop mastermind Phil Elvrum, also known for his work as a member of K Records bands D+ and Old Time Relijun. Following a series of cassettes on the local Knw-Yr-Own label, including Wires and Cords, Tests, and a self-titled effort, the Microphones issued their first full-length effort, also titled Tests, on the Elsinor label in the autumn 1999. Don't Wake Me Up appeared on K the next summer, followed in 2000 by Window and It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water. 2001 saw the release of The Glow Pt. 2, which added new dimensions to the Microphones' sprawling sound. Shortly after the release of 2003's concept album Mt. Eerie, Elvrum decided to retire the Microphones moniker and continued to tour and record under the name of the collective's last album.
After the release of the Microphones' 2003 album Mount Eerie, Washington State-based songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer Phil Elverum took that title as the name of his subsequent project, which expanded on the searching feel of the Microphones' music. He founded the label P.W. Elverum and Son Ltd., releasing a pair of CD-Rs, Seven New Songs of Mt. Eerie and Mt. Eerie Dances with Wolves/Wolf Mountain Howls in the World in 2004 before Mount Eerie's debut album No Flashlight became the label's first official Mount Eerie release in 2005. A CD/LP set with a poster that holds the record for the world's largest album cover, No Flashlight set the tone for Mount Eerie's further, intricately packaged releases, which were prolific; they included The Drums from No Flashlight, Singers (which featured different vocalists singing Elverum's songs), and the electronic-tinged 11 Old Songs of Mount Eerie, all of which also arrived in 2005. 2007 saw the release of a Microphones single, Don't Smoke/Get Off the Internet and Mount Eerie, Pts. 6 & 7, a picture disc and book of photographs, which was the sequel to the Microphones album that started it all. 2008's Black Wooden Ceiling Opening EP introduced Elverum's concept of playing "black metal with natural materials" and featured a different version of "Don't Smoke." Later that year, the concert DVD Fog Movies Live and a split single with No Kids preceded Lost Wisdom, a collaboration with Eric's Trip and Broken Girl singer Julie Doiron and guitarist Fred Squire. Dawn, a journal/CD set written during Elverum's stay in Norway in late 2002/early 2003, was expected late in 2008, and Wind's Poem was scheduled for spring 2009.
Asheville, North Carolina resident Ross Gentry performs and records under the guise of VILLAGES. With dense layers and glacial droning washes of guitar and synthesizer, he creates engaging narrative soundscapes that evoke the shifting fragility of the early ambient movement as well as the elegance of symphonic composition.
