The LP's are finally available!! Order Easy today and enjoy it as it was meant to be heard... thanks for your support!
Arbitrary Signs PR is pleased to announce the release of psych-underground mainstay Pete Nolan's debut long-player under his given name. Following two decades of chaotic tours and open-ended experimentation with the Magik Markers and Spectre Folk, Easy arrives as Nolan's most expansive yet obsessively honed set of songs to date, an outsider pop magnum opus collecting layer after layer of lived-in sounds and singing the harmony of their unexpected alignment.
Nolan’s creative work has always been about amassing large collages of sound onto tape, blending the primitive sensibilities of Jean Dubuffet's tape work with the Michigan/Teutonic pulse of the Stooges and Kraftwerk, and his guitar/drone technique is forever rooted in a La Monte Young by way of Lou Reed sensibility. On Easy, the sonics are both surprising and reassuring, an unbroken line extending from those early CD-R snapshots to the matured storytelling of the present.
"Dream, Dream, Dream, Dream" swaggers around the same bonfire the Markers frequented, "Driftin Wayvz" recalls the thick internal dream world of Spectre Folk's haziest vibrations, and the hypnotic backbeats of Nolan's drumming are as central as ever -- yet there's an unmistakable new depth to the arrangements, from the handclapped molasses funk of "The Mirrored Hallway," to the dark city-synth visualizations of "Backwater Blues," to the sheer joy and warmth found in "Sunshine Ocean Disguise." Far from mere ornamentation, Nolan weaves piano, mellotron, and orchestral flourishes into the songs' fabric, gently lifting them off to the subtle emotional heights they were calling out for.
Taking cues from time spent in pro studios with the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Scott Colburn, and Aaron Mullan but never straying too far from his base as a sound collage artist, Nolan wrote, recorded, and mixed Easy at home with the assistance of his wife, Julie. If you listen closely, you can hear Nolan electrocuting Mark E. Smith mid-performance and enslaving the Clean, making them play the funky drummer for days and days while Eno whirls his Revox in stormy guilt ridden dreams. But don’t be scared off, that’s just the process. The big payback of Easy is a joyful exaltation of life, freedom, mind-expansion, and Love. It's the long way around to a simplified meaning, it's the goal achieved in the describing, it's an invitation to get up and dance... it's Easy.
Pete Nolan
Easy
(August xx, Arbitrary Signs)
01. Marshmallow Moon
02. Sound of the Bees
03. Teen Vision/Blank Shipwreck
04. Sunshine Ocean Disguise
05. Dream, Dream, Dream, Dream
06. Driftin Wayvz
07. Backwater Blues
08. The Mirrored Hallway
BIO:
Pete Nolan has been a figure in the U.S. underground basement psych scene for the past two decades. A co-founder of legendary noise-rock outfit Magik Markers (with whom he's amassed over 50 releases), Nolan has collaborated with the likes of Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley (who serves as drummer for his long-running Spectre Folk project), Jandek, J. Mascis, John Olson, Randy “Lee” Sutherland, Chris Corsano, Thurston Moore, Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase, Elisa Ambrogio, Double Leopards, Son of Earth, Julie Cafritz, Kris Abplanalp, Brian Ramirez, Steve Gunn, Aaron Mullan, Mick Flower, Ashtray Navigations, Kim Gordon, and Mark Ibold.
Arbitrary Signs is the vanity record label of Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers. Artists: Magik
Markers, Spectre Folk, Devin, Gary, and Ross, MV&EE. For links to other Magik Markers see Drag City's Bandcamp. For more Spectre Folk go to the Vampire Blues Bandcamp page....more
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