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OUT NOW on Hat Hut || Are You Going To Stop.In Bern? - a surprise second edition of the 1999 In Bern live duo CD with guitarist Jim O'Rourke. "This music, figurative and non-figurative, almost oriental in its sparseness yet eternally rooted in the American landscape, invites the following thought – if John Cage had ever composed any country music, it would certainly have sounded like this: Thierry Jousse.
OUT NOW on Enabling Works || Hell's Kitcehn Park LP reissue is the first of a selection of Loren Connors typical and truly addictive guitar suites from the 90s to be reissued on vinyl. With his initial imprint release in 1993 on Black Label, Loren introduced his first thematic effort that later would prove to have shaped the identity of his work as it is today. In 1993, a picture of a poverty scene from around the turn of the 20th-century led Loren to come up with his first theme-based suite, continuing his solo home-recordings, now most distinctive in both sound and image. Hells Kitchen Park radiates with inspiration. On this album, Loren introduces the contrast between tender, often anthem-like melodic lullabies, and haunting, thick distorted guitar crying, which causes great intensity. Suzanne Langilles occasional singing adds surprising diversity and warmth to the recording. 108 gram vinyl.
OUT NOW on Family Vineyard || Into the Night Sky is the sixth album from avant guitarists Alan Licht and Connors, the first after 2003's In France (FBWL). Since 1993 these New York City artists have evolved an instrumental dialogue merging shades of electric blues and minimalism. These two epic pieces -- one from 1996, the other 2006 -- recorded live in concert clearly show far their desolate sound world grew over a decade of collaboration while the core of layered guitar complexities and alien melodies remain. The atmosphere conjured by the Licht-Connors duo is unmistakable -- the ebb of eloquently shaped feedback -- while the harmonic patterns recall 20th century classical music.
OUT NOW on Family Vineyard || In 1999 this debut collaboration between primitive American blues guitarist Loren Connors and the confounding electric bassist Darin Gray was issued on CD. The Lost Mariner was the first in a pair of releases by the upstart Family Vineyard label. Now with a decade of hindsight and a nod to looking ahead, here is a a 700 edition LP reissue of the studio session considered by Connors to be one of his finest. Since this album's 1999 release Connors has released a series of sorrowful solo albums and multi-disc collections on Family Vineyard while Gray formed the cinematic On Fillmore (with Wilco's Glen Kotche) and continued collaborations with Jim O'Rourke, Akira Sakata, Chris Corsano and others.
Loren Connors & Alan Licht Live @ Tonic 10.14.03
filmed by Ayal Senior
To accompany guitarist Loren Connors (nee Mazzacane) is to discover a strange and forgotten America, then venture irreversibly beyond. Connors is frequently pegged as an avant bluesman, and the blues are never far from the surface of his art -- but what a shimmering surface it is! The brevity and lyricism of his improvisations bear the mark of haiku; the floating, expressionist tones reflect the influence of Mark Rothko; and as he conjures keening Celtic wails, Connors offers himself as medium to the ghosts of New York City Past.
With "Sails", his 2006 release from Table of the Elements, Connors enters the third decade of such intimate explorations. In the course of these two discs, we pass through saturated phrasings, slowly undulating drones, doldrumic introspection and squalls of white noise. The penultimate highlight is a duet with Connors' aesthetic compadre, the late, great John Fahey. It's an intuitive and seemingly predestined meeting of two enlightened fellow-travelers: wily Fahey as the Dr. Livingstone of raw Americana to Connors' indefatigable Stanley. For his own part, Connors can evoke more clarity and purity in a short cluster of notes than most of his shred-happy contemporaries can muster in a lifetime -- and with Fahey's passing, he may be justifiably considered this country's greatest living guitarist.
Ultimately, Loren Connors' path, while not for the timid, is one of unspeakable treasure: a journey to the heart of brightness; a quest to penetrate a Terra Incognita of the soul.
"Just cause it's timeless does not mean it can wait." -- Cadence
"[Connors] is an American original in much the same sense as John Fahey or Jandek, in that hes chosen a classically American form, in this case the blues, and in true pioneer spirit taken it off somewhere else, crossed it with other forms . . . and shaped it into a uniquely individual vision of the modern American myth . . . [Connors] has created a singularly expressive and unique musical vocabulary. In short, he still sounds like no one else." -- David Keenan, The Wire
"Connors trademarks . . . are consistently prominent and sublime, always inferring something that runs a little thicker than sound . . . It makes sense that the like-minded John Fahey even saluted Connors on his final album with a piece using, in part, the same wandering tones and atmosphere, showing that after the poetries and aesthetics of life are gone, after style and sense are gone, there is something much harder to deal with that innate, tangible void that Connors has spent his life tugging at draws ever near." -- Matt Wellins, Dusted
"Loren MazzaCane Connors isnt a cult hero for no reason. His music is awe-inspiring . . . a one-person gentle tornado, Connors can get deep into human feelings with a single guitar." -- Pop Matters
