TRACKER

Amesby Tracker



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Blankets: Recordings for the Illustrated Novelby Tracker



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Polkby Tracker



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Since 1997, Tracker has been the recording moniker for engineer / musician / label owner-worker John Askew. Following the release of AMES (the first proper Tracker album), a steady line-up took to the road. Often stopping and gathering random sorts along the way, Askew and Tracker recorded and toured and followed up AMES with the second release POLK and the third release BLANKETS: Recordings for the Illustrated Novel.



NOW, Askew engineers and produces records, scores music for film and television but still spends most of the time in his basement studio Scenic Burrows and an Urei LA -4.

Projects he has recorded includes but is not limited to: RemoteTreeChildren, Glen Phillips, Richmond Fontaine, The Dodos, Petracovich, Wow and Flutter, Carcrashlander, Pt. Juncture, WA., Faux Hoax, LIttle Sue, Mount Analog, Misc., Buellton, Tracker, Tad Wagner.



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Releases:

TRACKER- AMES (FILMguerrero 2001)

TRACKER- POLK (FILMguerrero 2003)

TRACKER- BLANKETS:Recordings for the illustrated Novel (FILMguerrero 2004)



To BUY Tracker records go HERE



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***********************This is the release sheet for the last album:



Portland, OR. Tracker-Blankets is the third release to come from song/ recording-man John Askew's assemblage called Tracker. Written and produced by Askew to accompany the graphic novel Blankets by Craig Thompson, this album quietly threads it's way through Thompson's stark images of Winter and first love, and the dark, yet hopeful coming of age narrative. Following Tracker’s acclaimed cinematic, backyard epic POLK (2003), and the grainy, lo-fi first album AMES (2001), Tracker-Blankets juxtaposes the loose, dusty interiors of this pair of earlier Tracker concept albums with a more spare and cinematic instrumental record. The tracks on Blankets unravel slowly, never distracting from Thompson's drawings. While listening, the book's visuals come to the forefront of memory; the recordings perfectly provide the backdrop for the story to continue and replay. The recordings are ambient and breathing (Askew tips his hat to Brian Eno's Apollo, and Fripp/ Eno collaboration) and at times, the album shares the same sonic head-space as David Pajo's earlier Aerial M records and Yo La Tengo's Danelectro.

In an era where invention, concept, and the visual seem to be rapidly dissolving in modern recordings, Blankets: Recordings for the Illustrated Novel satisfies one's need to again experience story and image meeting with music. With Thompson's graphic novel already considered a timeless, illustrated masterpeice, Tracker's soundtrack will dutifully rest by the side of Thompson's epic, as a beautiful and moving, recorded classic.After receiving massive critical praise for his 2003 graphic novel Blankets, (Harvey award winner for

Best Graphic Novel of 2003) comic artist/ writer Craig Thompson approached Tracker's John Askew to do a "soundtrack" for his book. With the song writing/ production duties accomplished by Askew in his Scenic Burrows, Craig Thompson designed the package with all original art to suppliment the book Blankets. The package is hand crafted and assembled by Stumptown Printers and Pinball printers in Portland, OR.