Alex Archibald
Cat Got Tongue
Too much good music, not enough time, but here I pull out this record by Alex Archibald who released quite a few albums over the last few years. They all seem to have flown a bit under the radar of "American Primitive Weekly" and even this little blog (slash label).1
Alex Archibald's new album (and his former releases) stand out a bit from other solo acoustic guitar releases through his unique picking technique and the use of other instruments like banjo, piano, his voice, field recordings or like here on "Cat Got Tongue" fiddle. The latter was played by Lorna Rowe who is another fantastic musician.
It's hard to describe what makes Archibald's playing unique, it's his rougher plucking of strings that results in more metallic dissonances and overtones. This approach, paired with his great sense for memorable melodies makes it a really interesting listening experience. It's not Sunflower River Blues all over again, although I would be interested in hearing a version played by Alex.
"Cat Got Tongue" is a great album of pastoral American steel-string guitar ragas, traditional folk psychedelia and musique concrète (if you want to call the use of pre-recorded sounds that.)
The release is available as 12" vinyl record and digital on bandcamp
Arvella Gray on Maxwell Street, Chicago, 1967 - photographer: Vivian Maier
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For artists, self promotion is often not the nicest part of publishing their own work and many times it feels like spamming all the people who already know about you anyway. I experienced it myself in trying to promote the music I released here on DFBM. In my opinion there is no formula beside the known marketing techniques, and even those fail in our current world of overwhelming input and short attention spans. Define what success means and do your thing. ↩
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