the_artist_as_consumer
An amazing and unexpected return from the magical voice of The United States of America. This album reminds me of many different things all at once without sounding exactly like any one: Nico, Marianne Faithful, Robert Wyatt, and Dorothy's own past work. Total chill-out music of the highest order and of high art. I can listen to this on auto-repeat for literally hours. I've already turned a friend on. Fine, fine stuff!
Favorite track: Under an Endless Sky.
"Moskowitz breaks the celestial-ocean surface in the 22-minute title
piece with warm, melodic logic, in corkscrew-lullaby arcs.
Six shorter pieces evoke her haunted caroling and moonwalk balladry in the original USA – and make you hope she has phone messages
waiting from Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips."
"★ ★ ★ ★" - David Fricke, MOJO
"Feels like a cause for celebration" - UNCUT
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Recommended If You Like : Late-stage Marianne Faithfull, Mercury Rev, Terry Riley, Flaming Lips, Italian electronic music, The United States of America, Leonard Cohen's 'You Want It Darker'
Under An Endless Sky represents the interchange that took place between electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino, composer and writer Luca Chino Ferrari, and the legendary Dorothy Moskowitz, an icon of underground culture who broke all kinds of new ground as a member of The United States of America. Led by the charismatic composer Joseph Byrd, the band released their lone eponymous album on Columbia Records in 1968. It has taken on a mythic status that has grown through the years, sampled by Diplo and Mac Miller and widely acknowledged as a visionary psychedelic classic.
Francesco Paolo Paladino, an avant-garde Italian composer contacted Dorothy, inviting her to sing on some of his compositions. When she heard his 2021 CD release of Barene & Other Works, she recognized that they shared a similarly experimental point of view and she accepted his invitation. Paladino is known for his collaborations with Martyn Bates, Allison O'Donnell, Simon Fisher Turner, and other world-renowned contemporary composers, as well as his own sought-after 1985 debut LP Doublings and Silences Volume 1.
Francesco has long collaborated with Italian writer Luca Chino Ferrari, author of biographies of Nick Drake, Third Ear Band, Captain Beefheart, Tim Buckley and Syd Barrett. He submitted lyrics to Dorothy and together they began a profound and unique collaboration on the adaptation of lyrics to music, delving into words and meanings, phonetic properties and their singability. “Lyrics that have the audacity to deal with complex themes of human existence, real philosophical cutaways that look at reality and question it, often without offering answers,” says Ferrari.
Moskowitz's extraordinary voice and modal melodies float over Paladino's magical musical textures. There are no guitars, bass, drums or other technological devilry, but only virtual sounds (sometimes without even keyboards) upon which are grafted some acoustic interventions: violins and violas, woodwinds and percussion entrusted to excellent musicians such as Italians Riccardo Sinigaglia, Angelo Contini, Stefano Scala, Trio Cavallazzi and Gino Ape, and English folker Sean Breadin.
Tompkins Square label, established in 2005, has released acclaimed recordings by artists such as William Tyler, Gwenifer
Raymond, Ryley Walker and Michael Chapman as well as reissues of folk, old-timey, gospel and American Primitive Guitar. The label has received 8 Grammy nominations....more
supported by 23 fans who also own “Under an Endless Sky”
Mary Halvorson is a genius composer and guitarist who has developed her own musical language, and with Code Girl she has incorporated poetry into that language. Incredible compositions and lyricism (each track is a different kind of poem). Halvorson's playing is as great as usual, and all the other members of the band sound great. Robert Wyatt's singing in particular works extremely well in the tracks he's featured. Highly, highly recommend. rat
On “Meet Me By the River,” Dawn Landes’s self-described “Nashville record,” buoyant country melodies settle deep into lush instrumentation. Bandcamp New & Notable May 7, 2018