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NYMPH "NYMPH emerge resplendent: wild, free and gloriously psychedelic...in a hinterland between the acid-fried rock of the Texas plains and the inner journeys of Can or Coltrane." - The Wire "Begins with the sound of Matty McDermott's hollow-bodied electric guitar, playing curled and emphatic Malian riffs with amplifier settings that sound like Neil Young's, loud and tough and hugely echoing… a bone-rattling album." - New York Times NYMPH is a Brooklyn-based psychedelic-shred/avant-garde outfit whose tempestuously transcendent music has been penetrating the New York music scene with bared teeth. This, their self-titled debut album, was recorded and mixed by Jason Meagher (of No Neck Blues Band) at Black Dirt Studios in upstate New York and by David Tolomei at DNA in New York City from late autumn 2007 – summer 2009, and mastered by Sarah Register (of Talk Normal) at The Lodge studios in New York City. Originally self- released as a very limited double LP we are very proud to be bringing the album to wider attention. NYMPH’S compositional palette encompasses an ebullient kaleidoscope of sound: imagine 13th Floor Elevators essaying a Rahsaan Roland Kirk jam and you begin to get the picture. Or maybe Steve Reich bonging out on Pandit Pran Nath and jamming with This Heat. The four-piece’s orgiastic din is composed and orchestrated by the nucleus of Matty McDermott (formerly of Coyote – Birdman Records) and Eri Shoji; and currently featuring the thundering harmonic prowess of bassist Nickle Emmet, with Jason Robira (Dark Meat) pounding the skins. Matty comes most avowedly from a rock n roll, free jazz and noise background. He conjures the spirits of chaos and harmony he earned in those Osirian trenches thus endowing his sonic deftness into the nimbus of NYMPH. Matty’s inner animal comes mostly to bear in his monstrous guitar sound: echoed, reverbed, distorted, slack-jawed, claw-toothed and sharp as lethal icicles, it is equal parts Greg Ginn and Erkin Koray. The blissful spirit and luxuriant execution of Matty’s showering riffage has much more in common with the excursions of later-era John Coltrane and Can than it does with an orthodox devotion to the stereotypical three chords that has come to be recognized of late as “Psychedelia.” Eri, like the caterwauls of a Japanese banshee, expells the piercing vocal counterpoint to Matty’s mesmeric guitar. Eri relies on intuitive vocal exression largely free from the semantic bounds of lyric; her mode finds form in a cavalcade of orgasmic yelps, howls & piercing screams. Eri has studied Hindustani classical singing, as well as spent time with the teachings of La Monte Young and Marion Zazeela, while bringing a lived-in knowledge of improvisational Gagaku and Butoh traditions of her native shores. With a handmade array of percussion instruments reminiscent of the Sun Ra “lightening drum” (including ankle bells, tambourines, ghavals and vests made of prayer bells) Eri cuts an extremely magnetic and ethereal presence. Her iconoclastic style and impassioned percussion-via-dancing provides the visual linchpin and hyper-sexual tension that propels the band through their hypnotic live show. |
Catalog Number: TSR080 Tracklisting: FOR MORE INFO ON NYMPH All Tracks Listed In Blue Are Linked To A Downloadable MP3
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