2024 in Review // Favorite EPs, Reissues and Albums of J Moss (Pt. 2)

“J Moss is a deeply authentic music maker. One of the most prolific recording projects I’ve heard of in recent memory, Modern Folk can be anything from fingerstyle acoustic guitar, to field recording laden soundscapes, to noisy spacious freak outs, to a free rock band full of friends” – Bud Tapes

J Moss, aka The Modern Folk, is no big fan of lists, by his own admission. Which is why we’re honored to have him kick off an overview of 2024 for us!

You can find J’s records on WarHen, Ramble Records and Eiderdown, among many other labels. He also contributed Alma As She Is to our recent digital sampler, along with numerous guest mixes and roundups.

Part 1 of the roundup is available here

Rob Dobson – Be Easy (WarHen Records)

Rob Dobson is a New Orleans-born, California and Virginia-raised, Los Angeles-based musician, producer, and masteringengineer.

Rob previously made music as Big Air, and has collaborated with Avid Dancer, Ryan Pollie, Teddy Grossman, Yohei, Gabriel Delicious, Borrowed Beams of Light, The Fire Tapes, and more

Further Reading: Mesmerized.io / Obscure Sound

Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown (Domino)

Lives Outgrown is the debut album by Beth Gibbons featuring 10 beautiful new songs recorded over a period of 10 years, the album was produced by James Ford & Beth Gibbons with additional production by Lee Harris (Talk Talk).

Lives Outgrown is, by some measure, Beth’s most personal work to date, the result of a period of sustained reflection and change — “lots of goodbyes,” in Beth’s words. Farewells to family, to friends, even to her former self. These are songs from the mid-course of life, when looking ahead no longer yields what it used to, and looking back has a sudden, sharper focus.

Further Reading: Beats Per Minute / CONE Magazine

Bill MacKay – Locust Land (Drag City)

Rolling and tumbling in his own sweet way, guitarist Bill MacKay discovers a territory all his own: Locust Land. New vistas abound: Bill adds a measure of keyboard playing to his picking mastery, sings a few more, and, a devout and ceaseless collaborator, features a few other players (Sam Wagster, Mikel Patrick Avery and Janet Beveridge Bean). Whether played solo or with companions, Bill’s music projects the strength of the universal collective.

Further Reading: KLOF Mag / Flood Mag

Blue Angels – s/t

Delgado Bros. C&W present The Blue Angels:

Neil Campbell
Will Renton
Taven Wilson

with:

Ben Ryan
Jason Summer
Tom Taetzsch

Quintelium – Dream and Reality (Somewherecold Records)

Quintelium is the electronic/ambient project of Michael McWay, hailing from the Central Valley of California. So far his work ranges from the drone/ambient from his debut Memory Horizon (2022, on Kaiseiki Digital) to the more rhythmic Berlin School-inspired Kosmische of Moon Waves (2023, on Ephem-Aural).

His newest, Dream And Reality, out on Somewherecold Records, expands and deepens the drone excursions of his debut and explores the spiritual terrain of new age and the sound of Stars of the Lid. Dream and Reality uses the minimal aesthetics of drone and ambience to evoke a flowing, ever-changing reality, the one that we find ourselves in in every instant.

Will DeLee – Improvisations for Guitar and Charango (bud tapes)

William DeLee is one of the most proficient pickers in Portland, Oregon. Recorded live to tape with no effects and no overdubs, DeLee’s debut tape showcases his familiarity with the guitar and the charango, a small 10 string instrument that were originally made from Armadillo Shells (Will’s is made of wood), along with his keen ear for improvisation and play. Exuberance and lush textures explode from the strings between DeLee’s fingers while taking the listener through dynamic peaks and valleys of sound.

Niklas Sørensen – Akustisk

Most can count on one hand—some can’t at all—the number of nights they’ve spent in the company of a true friend, when both beings find themselves utterly, simply transcendent. They are shot straight through with clear-eyed, mutual empathy, letting loose a litany of experience—be it grief, joy, misgiving, anticipation, or some of the myriad other sensations we humans are, for better or worse, saddled to endure. Rarer still is an album that seems effortlessly, to encompass that unspeakable range, and to answer immediately in kind.

The act of emotional evolution is dramatic, but the means need not be. Such is contained within Nicklas Sørensen’s “Akustisk,” which is instrumentally as humble as the title suggests. Here he weaves vignettes from the threads of sound he pulls from a 6-string guitar. His influences, guessed at as they are, seem simultaneously apparent and obscured—Jansch & Renbourn, Bull, Greenwood, and beyond—and he proves to be a deft and singular weaver. – Jen Powers

Hearts of Oak – Valley of Dark Hills (Deer Lodge Records)

Since bass player Aron Christenson was killed two years ago while hiking with his dog near Walput Lake in Lewis County, Oregon, guitarist Ezra Meredith of Hearts of Oak has been waiting for justice to be served for their allegedly murdered friend. Christenson was one of their companions during a camping excursion. Given the mess that’s been made of the investigation, that wait may be a long one.

The wait for the fifth Hearts of Oak album, however, an ambitious, 100-minute double-LP (no CD) entitled “Valley of Dark Hills” will be over in October with its release on Deer Lodge Records. This sixteen-track journey through Crazy Horse-inspired burners and Jerry Jeff Walker-infused barroom rippers is a departure from their previous album, “Moves” (2018). The band’s music has been termed “shoegazer Americana” and “a singer-songwriter with a druggy, psychedelic backing band.” Sure, we’ll go with those cryptic descriptions. – Americana UK

Further Reading: Old Grey Cat / The Rocking Magpie

J.M. Hart – As We Know It

“You’re a storyteller,” he said as I stopped strumming and addressed my neglected beverage.

“Sometimes,” I replied.

There are a couple true stories in here but none is more factual than “Woodsmoke on Trench Hill”, an instrumental. “Sunken Road” is set in a real time and place and based on things that happened. The rest are constructed from the world and my imagination in such a way that even I can’t be sure which came from where.

When I write a love song, it’s an expression of an emotion that I have, have had, or wonder about. Rarely is it an entirely true story about myself. When I write a song about the end of the world, it’s because I read the paper that day. Of course, the world won’t end anytime soon. She’ll simply shrug us off and keep spinning. So it goes.

Further Reading: Here Comes The Flood

Kim Deal – Nobody Loves You More (4AD)

Nobody Loves You More is Kim Deal’s debut album, although it’s technically not her first release under her own name – she self-released a 5-part, 10-song 7” vinyl series in 2013, and beyond that, she’s earned her stripes as early as the late 80s with bands Pixies and The Breeders. The long-awaited record’s creation began with its oldest songs, “Are You Mine?” and “Wish I Was,” which were written and originally recorded in 2011 and included in said vinyl series, shortly after Deal concluded Pixies’ ‘Lost Cities Tour’ and relocated to L.A.

In the years since, the record took shape in pieces, coming to light with a variety of collaborators, including Breeders past and present (Mando Lopez, Kelley Deal, Jim Macpherson, and Britt Walford), as well as new friends like Jack Lawrence (The Greenhorns) and Savages’ Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan. Tracked over the last several years, the record’s last recording was helmed by iconic engineer and Deal’s close friend Steve Albini, tracking “A Good Time Pushed” with Jim and Kelley in November 2022.

Further Reading: Loud Women / Post Trash

Grateful Dead – Duke ’78 (archival)

Duke ’78 features the previously unreleased complete show from Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke University, Durham, NC 4/12/78

Power Strip – Nothing Yet (Toast-Op Records)

create meaning through process

Spiral Joy Band – Waves of Higher Bodies (bud tapes)

Wisconsin based drone collective Spiral Joy Band grew from the ashes of legendary Virginia avant-folk band Pelt, like a heat-activated seed breaking through its shell after a forest fire. The line-up tends to shift, including mostly Pelt alumni and associates, and since their formation in 2004, Spiral Joy Band has released a steady stream of mind altering long-form folk inflected improvisations. Their newest album, Waves of Higher Bodies, is out December 6th on Portland, Oregon label Bud Tapes in cassette and digital formats. This new zone finds the group distilled down to its most basic components, core member Mikel Dimmick acting as the gravitational center of a slow, swirling orbit of vibrations with help from longtime fellow traveler and freak-folk scene audio guru Rob Vaughn. It’s as close to a solo effort as a record from a band could be, there are no strings or reeds present, but the sounds are no less elemental, and no less cleansing. It’s music that can reaffirm your place as an essential part of the universe and knock the scales from your third eye — if you let it. – Dusted

Ilya S.

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