Derek Piotr - The Devil Knows How '2022

Tracks list

       A brilliant, bizarre album that plays like an audio illusion, modern and
archaic all at once. Experimental folk music that's between the archival
anthologies of Death is Not the End and modern electroacoustic sounds.

Derek Piotr reinterprets old time folk music on "The Devil Knows How", building
on the ideas he explored on 2021's "Making and Then Unmaking". This time he
deconstructs the music's texture more holistically, attempting to mimic
long-gone recording methods and field recordings to recreate the physical
aesthetic of vintage folk music as well as the composition. Again, he works
alongside his friend Scott Solter, who assists him with the "black-magicked tape
and wire recording techniques" to give the album a sound that shunts it outside
of the timeline, and again he's guided by the work of North Carolina's Lena Bare
Turbyfill, a folk singer whose work has been collected and documented on the
Death is Not the End label.

There are only two original pieces on the album, 'Yes, They All Sing' which
centers Lena Bare Turbyfill's speaking voice, and 'They’d Sing Old Songs,
and They’d Sing the New Ones' that does the same with Lena's daughter
Nicola 'Aunt Nicky' Pritchard. The rest of the tracks are crackly assemblages of
pedal steel guitar and characteristic vocals that sit between field recording
and musique concréte project. To bring the sounds up to a contemporary
standard, Piotr enlisted Stephan Mathieu who treated them like they were
historical recordings, restoring the sounds while retaining their all-important
flutter. It's a unique project and inviting set of sounds that allows us to
reconsider our feelings on archival folk music and folk revivalism - Piotr's
sleight of hand comes from his depth of experience with the subject matter, and
his closeness with Lena Bare Turbyfill's family, and that offers the project an
emotional weight that's hard to ignore.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Derek Piotr - "Yes, They All Sing" (2:54)
1.02 - Derek Piotr - Old Lady and the Devil (4:02)
1.03 - Derek Piotr - "Hold up Your Hand, Old Joshua!" She Cried (5:00)
1.04 - Derek Piotr - How Can I Keep from Crying? (2:06)
1.05 - Derek Piotr - Lily Shull (2:21)
1.06 - Derek Piotr - Ellen Smith (5:17)
1.07 - Derek Piotr - "They'd Sing Old Songs, and They'd Sing the New Ones"
(1:50)
1.08 - Derek Piotr - Message Written on the Tombstone for 3½-year-old Ephriam
Stipe, Died 1826 (0:43)
1.09 - Derek Piotr - George Collins (2:08)
1.10 - Derek Piotr - Lee Mills (3:29) 

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