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Badgerlore
We Are All Hopeful Farmers, We Are All Scared Rabbits
2007

Xeric
XER-CD-114
Compact disc

Membership and horizons continue to expand for Badgerlore, now the great tribal council of the dubiously-dubbed "Freak Folk" movement. Founders Rob Fisk (Deerhoof, 7-Year Rabbit Cycle) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire) released their debut in 2002. Tom Carter (Charalambides) and Pete Swanson (Yellow Swans) joined in 2004; in 2006, Glen Donaldson (Blithe Sons, Jeweled Antler) and Liz Harris (Grouper) added their voices. Now the clan extends its cadence of mantras, dirges, prayers and curses with its third full-length release, We Are All Hopeful Farmers, We Are All Scared Rabbits.

While the group enlarges, the form compresses, into a brambled nexus of sound, as quaverous organs and guitars, humid vocals, and florid tape manipulations all intertwine. It's their most song-oriented recording to date, the tracks functioning as tightly-clasped fetishes and buried amulets, exerting a phantasmic pull on the listener. Together the musicians proceed with masterful nuance and inexorable tension. It is the sound of effigy mounds slowly rousing from prehistoric slumber.

Forget New Weird America; forget Old Weird America. In devotional murmurs and arboreal whispers, the denizens of the Badgerlore lodge summon the dreadful, breathing shadow of the Old Weird Universe.

  • Features original artwork and tintypes by San Francisco artist Allison Watkins

  • Graphic design by Grammy Award-winner Susan Archie

“Alternating heartrending drone and quietly affecting folk carved by taciturn hermits, [Badgerlore] speaks through distant symbols, inky clouds, and thin pine-needle patterns on the floor. These pipers at the gates of dusk are holed up against the witching hour, creating beauty within a crumbling, musky night.”
Pitchfork

“Organic sure, but [Badgerlore's] touchstones are, in their intellectualism and breadth, surprisingly more art than folk, recalling Eno's Ambient series, Laurie Anderson's warmer vocal narcissism, and even John Cale's early, occasional organ visitations.”
Pitchfork

“Like some cave painting that starts to glow and move before your eyes as the torch sputters out … Inspired.”
Dusted

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Jack Rose
Greg Malcolm
Ben Vida
Sir Richard Bishop
Michael Hurley
No Neck Blues Band
w/ John Fahey and Coach Fingers
Lichens
Badgerlore
R. Keenan Lawler
Pumice
David Daniell
The Great Koonaklaster Speaks:
A John Fahey Celebration
2006

Table of the Elements
[Protactinium] TOE-CD-91
Compact disc

John Fahey's death is shrouded in confusion and camouflage. He is believed to have died in the explosion of a house during the filming of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point in 1969. His remains were never found, and the question remains: Did Fahey purposely stage his own death for his own occlusive purposes?

A collusion of folk, blues, ethnic and modern classical methods, Fahey's music suggests both the trickster and the shaman, and has attracted a cult of musician followers over the years, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. His unsolved disappearance has inspired another cult that worships Count Saint Germain, a Rosicrucian adept who is said to have never died and assumed various identities over the centuries. Disciples of this sect, heard on this record, believe Fahey, "The Great Koonaklaster," to be the most recent incarnation of Saint Germain. They view Fahey's music as a synthesis of Saint Germain's abilities as a classical composer and skills as an alchemist, and have absorbed his guitar style in order to pay homage to him.

There is much to be gleaned from the Koonaklasterians' rites contained within; whether or not you choose to accept this "Immortal Motherf#cker of the 20th Century" as Saint Germain is up to you.

"If [I Am the] Resurrection is the first and worst tribute to [John] Fahey released since his 2001 death, The Great Koonaklaster Speaks is the newest and best, the clearest and most brazen picture of the onus and inspiration Fahey has left for modern music. Importantly, this is a tribute record, but it's not a covers record: Instead, it collects unreleased work from 11 current experimental acts that feel Fahey's influence and attempt to offer a glimpse of it here. Alternately humorous, solemn, grounded, and neoteric, the rangy work on Koonaklaster asserts that Fahey wasn't perfect or filtered, and that his legacy is at once challenging and lifting. It's not about critical doublespeak or who can pick the best six-string. Instead, its liner notes are a fictional mythology of Fahey's life written in his style, and the playing recasts the characteristics that fired his legacy. Bravo"
Pitchfork

Track List

1. Jack Rose "Since I've Been a Man Full Grown" 11:08
2. Greg Malcolm "Spanish Flang Dang" 5:13
3. Ben Vida "Exorcise/Intone" 7:24
4. Sir Richard Bishop "Hood River Lap Dance" 4:25
5. Michael Hurley "My Babe, My Babe" 3:00
6. No Neck Blues Band w/ John Fahey and Coach Fingers "Overcome" 3:46
7. Lichens "Escapisms in a Comedic Forum" 3:27
8. Badgerlore "Red Apple" 5:31
9. R. Keenan Lawler "I Used to Strive for a Tree; Now I Thrive on a Mountain" 4:06
10. Pumice "Ceremonial Knives" 4:53
11. David Daniell "Crossing the Susquehanna River Bridge" 11:31

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OWN THE ARCHIVE

(Posted by Within Things, May 18, 2023)

From 1993, US recording label Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

The label’s carefully cultivated archive now contains over 15,000 CDs and LPs, an impossible quantity to logistically or financially maintain. Rather than “recycle” the majority of these modern sound and design artifacts, Table of the Elements is making them available to the public via Within Things.

From rich bundles of obscure recordings, exclusive printed material, and limited quantity “holy grails,” Within Things is excited to help connect this important archive to the public. We’re very honored to collaborate with a label that helped define a path and inspire what we do, long before our store even existed.

Click the image above to be taken directly to the Table of the Elements section on our site, and stay posted for the announcement of limited offerings via our newsletter.

~~o0o~~

"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”

—Pitchfork

"The music made and cultivated by such artists as Tony Conrad, Captain Beefheart, John Fahey, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Charlie Feathers, Dock Boggs, Jim O’Rourke, Faust, Derek Bailey, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Keiji Haino, Arnold Dreyblatt, Charley Patton, Harry Smith, and scores more, is at once among the most radical and deeply rooted of the 20th century, transcending time and place through the agency of the vibrating string, the resonance of the drone, the terrifying beauty of electric amplification, the hypnotic power of repetition, and the revelatory genius of cranky individualism. 

"How does someone begin to represent that in a visual manner? The trick involves some old-fashioned alchemy. Everyday commodity has to be constructed as both miniature museum and theater. No longer a mere object, it now becomes a site in which one can endlessly indulge a sense of wonder, love and, yes, obsession. It’s not often that someone can cast an influence on a broader design aesthetic — think Blue Note in the 1960s, with its hip Reid Miles album covers — but as this sizable body of work took shape, that’s exactly what happened.”

—Steve Dollar

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism [are] beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, [the label] produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions – not ossified museum objects.”

—Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."

—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”

—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”

—Henry Rollins

All contents ©2024 Table of the Elements ®2024 Table of the Elements Archive. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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