Announce Upcoming Solo Releases on Neurot!
Scott Kelly is one of three founding members of Oakland, California experimental hardcore band Neurosis. He has been writing and recording music since 1985 with Neurosis, Tribes of Neurot, Blood and Time and his solo acoustic project. He has also appeared in other recordings, most notably Mastodon's Leviathan (2004) (on the song Hearts Alive) and Blood Mountain (2006) (on the song Crystal Skull). Currently he is still writing, recording and performing with Neurosis and all of the related projects as well as being part owner of Neurosis' record label Neurot Recordings. He has recently started an Internet radio station/website called Combat Music Radio. - Wikipedia.com
* Kelly is also currently working on the new Blood & Time recording as well as writing new music with Neurosis and Shrinebuilder which is a collaboration with Wino (St Vitus/Hidden Hand), Dale Crover (Melvins), and Al Cisneros (Om). Look for the debut release from Shrinebuilder on NR in 2009.
Steve Von Till is a singer and guitarist for the progressive experimental metal band, Neurosis. He is also in Tribes of Neurot and Culper Ring, and records solo work under both his given name and the moniker Harvestman. - Wikipeda.com
* Like Kelly, Von Till is still writing, recording and performing with Neurosis and all of the related projects as well as being part owner of Neurosis' record label Neurot Recordings. He is writing new music with Neurosis, planning further Harvestman titles, including the limited edition release of the soundtrack to the 2006 film 'Hate2O' (Alex Infascelli, dir.), which was scored entirely by Von Till performing as Harvestman.
The leaders of one of the most groundbreaking bands in the history of heavy music have just announced they will be releasing new solo albums on their own Neurot Recordings, later this Spring. Read below to learn more about each amazing album.
SCOTT KELLY: THE WAKE
(May 6th, 2008)
In James Joyce's Dublin the streets inhale and exhale an Irishness that is so fundamentally elemental that it's more a part of the landscape than the actual landscape which is to say: his books are more real than the real space they describe. And so it is with SCOTT KELLY, great guitar griot and founder of Neurosis, and his Wake. Or THE WAKE, to be precise. Its reality supersedes the place, the space and the particulars that gave birth to it. Mixing imagery that borders on a bold and stark contemplation of the limits of our earthly existence via our failed loves, efforts, conceits and even our less than noble other failures [blissfully unspecified and probably unnecessary to HAVE them specified: if you're ALIVE the blanks are easy enough to fill in], THE WAKE with its lion-in-the-winter woe wrenches the almost inexpressibly sad into seven songs that sound like what you hear when you're just about to not hear anything anymore.
"The weather never changes in my world." – Kelly
Goddamned right.
With an acoustic guitar and a croon that crams the lilt, lift and longing of several lives well lived into 5-some-odd minutes of every song this record would not only not have been possible at any other point in either his life, or ours for that matter, than now, it also seems to suggest the shape of beyond-now: thin and on fire.
Enjoy it. Time is short.
--Eugene S. Robinson/www.eugenesrobinson.com
STEVE VON TILL: A GRAVE IS A GRIM HORSE
(May 20th, 2008)
A Grave Is A Grim Horse marks yet another musical accomplishment from a man who has long given us music to save ours lives with. - Iann Robinson / NoneLouder.com
Perhaps the history of the song is innate within us. At least that's what we might glean from STEVE VON TILL's third Neurot Recordings solo outing A GRAVE IS A GRIM HORSE. Intertwined with interpretations of songs by Nick Drake, Townes van Zandt, Mickey Newberry and Lyle Lovitt, Von Till's powerful yet subtly graceful originals merge with a lexicon that manifests as something beyond the concept of persona that popular culture has repeatedly old us over the past 50 years. Where his previous releases showed reverence for folks music forms of the past, A GRAVE IS A GRIM HORSE peers directly inward, drawing from this history of song and earnestly embracing the need we all share to etch our mark upon the artifacts that will ultimately survive us.
Listening to the album, there's a troubling theme that reveals itself only when we're not seeking it. It tells us that we are nothing more than the part of the sum of an elusive whole, but sometimes the patterns that define us can be harnessed, as they are here. And what's most striking about the album is that Von Till's originals are so immediately captivating and threadbare that they seem more familiar on first listen than the works of the time-honored songwriters to whom he pays tribute.
For more information, visit:
www.neurotrecordings.com
