Posted in Whathaveyou on March 16th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
So maybe you’re saying to yourself right now, ‘Hey, didn’t this loser blogger dope post about a new T.G. Olson record like two weeks ago?” Indeed, he — I mean I — did. That album was the more experimentalist Owned and Operated By: Twang Trust, LLC (info here). This one is the more structured, more crisply produced A Stone that Forever Rolls, which begins with the psychedelic folk of its opening track and unfolds gracefully through eight tracks and 30 minutes of gorgeous arrangement balance and a clearly different intent than the last time out.
I think next chance I get to do so — so, next month maybe? — I’ll probably review the two releases together, just to give the side-by-side and really emphasize how different they are. Two things though that worry me about A Stone that Forever Rolls. First, Olson dedicates it to Odin, who he then names “DOGGOD,” which tells me that his dog died. And that sucks in a way that few things sucks. Condolences to Olson for the loss.
Also in not-as-tragic-but-hardly-fortunate news, it would seem Olson‘s Roland VS-1680 — the “VS” standing for “virtual studio,” as in,his recording apparatus — has bit the dust. These things are replaceable but hardly cheap, and while I doubt it’ll hold Olson up for all that long, it’s still a pain to deal with.
At least the album is beautiful. It was released in the usual manner: posted at the Across Tundras Bandcamp page with little fanfare beyond a post on Thee Facebooks. You can stream and download it at the bottom of this post. Other info follows:
T.G. OLSON – A Stone that Forever Rolls
The end of an era…
Adios Odin and the VS-1680 aka “The Machine”
1. A Stone That Forever Rolls 03:56 2. The Storms a Comin’ 03:43 3. Down in the Draw 03:20 4. Still They Haunt Us 04:16 5. Around a Slow Dying Fire 03:54 6. In the Valley of the Tomb of the Kings 03:16 7. Slow Tick 04:29 8. Bless yr Heart My Friend 03:46
Recorded ~ Mixed ~ Mastered : January – March 2018 by T.G. Olson
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 2nd, 2018 by JJ Koczan
I don’t even know what a front-to-back discography from Across Tundras frontman T.G. Olson would look like at this point, but it would be well populated. The last month has seen a flurry of activity on the prolific singer-songwriter/experimentalist’s Bandcamp page, with offerings from not only his own solo-project in the form of the cynically-titled Owned and Operated By: Twang Trust LLC, but also his outfits Funeral Electrical and Inget Namn, a split with Caleb R.K. Williams, and two releases from Across Tundras — a collection of demos and lost tracks, and a new EP with Shannon Allie-Murphy sharing vocal duties as on 2015’s Home Free EP (discussed here). Frankly, it’s a lot. Probably too much to keep up with. But hey, there’s time.
As regards Owned and Operated By: Twang Trust LLC, it’s more experimental than some of Olson‘s straightforward or folkish fare, but deeply cinematic, and even as the drones and guitar howl on “Carpenter Blues,” there’s something in the landscape created to remind one of mid-aughts Earth, Neil Young‘s Dead Man soundtrack, etc., and given Olson‘s prairie-stretch interpretation, that’s by no means a complaint. Like always, all this stuff is available as a name-your-price download at the Across Tundras Bandcamp, so it’s there for the taking, but even if you sign up for updates as I have five or six times now, don’t expect to be able to keep up with everything that comes out. Just make sure you check back once in a while to see if you can get a handle on what Olson‘s up to. And good luck with that.
Still, hardly an impartial observer, but I dig this one. Weird drones, open spaces, lush and languid and swaying. Yeah, I’m pretty much sold.
Dig it:
T.G. OLSON – Owned and Operated By: Twang Trust LLC
These tracks are fully owned by Twang Trust LLC and will be mined and exploited until exhausted. Thanks for listening.
T.G. Olson – Guitars, Drones, Field Recordings, Sound Manipulations
Tracklisting 1. Running Fight 05:51 2. Laid West 05:26 3. Lies Hidden 04:50 4. Where Were You When 05:39 5. Carpenter Blues 04:48 6. Somewhere Unseen 04:25 7. Shade Tree 04:19 8. When the Bee Balm is in Bloom 04:15 9. Guitar Respite 04:42 10. Hitching Post Part II 04:19
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 15th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Somehow, no matter how many times I sign up for the email updates and no matter how regularly I check in, I perpetually feel like I’m playing catch-up with the Across Tundras/ T.G. Olson Bandcamp page. Releases tend to show up unannounced, and by the time they’re there, well, you’re already late. There’s been a flurry of activity of late as the prolific-as-ever Tanner Olson has made a number of offerings available as limited CDRs with handmade packaging in addition to posting new outings from his drone projects Inget Namn and Funeral Electrical — lest we forget it’s only been two months since his latest solo album, Searching for the Ur-Plant (review here), surfaced as well — and yeah, it’s a lot to keep up with.
Nonetheless, any new Across Tundras is good news as far as I’m concerned. Their next full-length has been in progress on one level or another for a couple years now, and in 2015, they issued the stopgap Home Free EP (discussed here) that was said at the time to feature tracks that would be on the record. I don’t know if the same applies to the just-issued two-songer Blood for the Sun / Hearts for the Rain, but for a recently-recorded sampling of the band’s trademark heavy rambling style and a more acoustic-based complementary piece, I’m not about to complain. 10 minutes of new Across Tundras; today was a good day.
As ever, the release is available as a name-your-price download via the Bandcamp page linked below, so go and get it before the next offering shows up and you’re already behind. Trust me, it can happen. In thinking of the delay on the new Across Tundras LP though, note that Blood for the Sun / Hearts for the Rain was recorded between Olson and bassist/drummer Matt Shively in Nebraska and Virginia. That’s one hell of a geographic divide to overcome for a writing/recording session. Might explain some of what’s taking so long, even if they’re just working as a two-piece rather than the band’s traditional trio incarnation.
Alright, here’s the goods:
Across Tundras – Blood for the Sun / Hearts for the Rain
Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Matt Shively and Tanner Olson in Plattsmouth, NE and Roanoke, VA in the Summer of 2017.
1. Blood for the Sun 05:32 2. Hearts for the Rain 05:28
Tanner Olson – Guitar, Vocals Matt Shively – Bass, Drums
Posted in Reviews on November 17th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
T.G. Olson is rarely far off from his next release. At this point, the Across Tundras frontman has settled into a steady rhythm where every few months, new songs will be recorded and presented for those who’ll have them as name-your-price downloads on Bandcamp. Sometimes — as in the case of his latest, Searching for the Ur-Plant — these DIY digital offerings will be complemented by limited, usually gorgeous and suitably organic-looking handmade CDRs pressed through the auspices of Olson‘s Electric Relics Records imprint. Sometimes not. Either way, the next thing always seems to be on the horizon. This has led to a remarkably productive few years and an increasingly complex narrative as to just what Olson‘s solo work encompasses in terms of style and craft.
Searching for the Ur-Plant was preceded this Spring by the full-length Foothills Before the Mountain (review here), which in turn followed a busy 2016 that produced La Violenza Naturale (review here), the From the Rocky Peaks b/w Servant to Blues single (discussed here) and the albums The Broken End of the Deal (review here) and Quicksilver Sound (discussed here), and the newer work follows a path distinct from its most immediate predecessor in a way that makes it more difficult to guess what Olson‘s next move might be. Other, of course, than (presumably) putting out another record. Because that’s kind of how he does. The question is how that record will be defined, and the reason that’s harder to determine as a result of the eight-song Searching for the Ur-Plant is because how much it strips down the approach taken on Foothills Before the Mountain.
On sheer sonic terms, the drone-folk arrangements of cuts like opener “On a High Like a Mountain” or the later “New Resistance Blues” aren’t necessarily new ground for Olson, but they represent a turn from what seemed to be more full-band-style fare his last time out toward a more distinctly “solo” feel. The story goes that the material was “handmade from scratch during one rainy week in October 2017. All songs were written new on the spot and recorded one by one until 33:32 minutes had been laid to bare to tape,” and having been completed on Oct. 11, Searching for the Ur-Plant found issue three days later: written, performed, recorded, produced, mixed, mastered and pressed by Olson himself.
At its most minimal, as on “Time Flies By and By,” the album carries that insular feel, but there’s also a good bit of reaching out done in these tracks, which from the early Paul Simon-style bounce of “The Old Brigade” to the later handclaps of the penultimate “Back on the Cross” seem to be in conversation with the human interaction at the root of Americana and folk traditionalism — the idea that songs were meant to be shared, sung by groups together, and so on.
A big difference is in percussion and the general lack thereof, and where Foothills Before the Mountain was less shy about including drums, those handclaps in “Back on the Cross” are about it as far as outward timekeeping goes. Elsewhere, the key seems to be in call and response vocals — a theme “On a High Like a Mountain” sets early and which continues through the repetition-minded, harmonica-laced “A Constant Companion,” “Time Flies By and By,” “The Old Brigade,” “Trying to Take it All In,” “New Resistance Blues,” and closer “The Ur-Plant” itself — Olson answering his vocal lines in delayed time over acoustic and electric guitar that free-flows between drift and ramble, wistful and playful.
Given the timeline in which Searching for the Ur-Plant was put together — written and tracked in the span of a week — that such consistencies would develop makes sense. Sometimes an idea just gets stuck in your head and needs to be exorcised, and despite that steady element, the songs remain varied in their intent, whether it’s the classic melancholy of “A Constant Companion” with its echoes of airy slide guitar or the soft and swaying guitar and harmonica execution of “The Ur-Plant,” which rounds out in less chorus-focused fashion than cuts like “On a High Like a Mountain” or “The Old Brigade,” but with an absolute center based in the realization of its pastoralia, humble even as it brims with creativity and understated nuance. This too is familiar ground from Olson, but brought to bear with a fascinating patience that would seem to fly in the face of the urgency with which Searching for the Ur-Plant was written and constructed.
It would’ve been easy, in other words, for Olson to come across as rushed on a record that took a week to make. But he doesn’t. Instead, he harvests an eight-song/33-minute collection that sidesteps expectation while remaining quintessentially his in terms of atmosphere and overarching style, which is a balance that, so well struck as it is, defines Searching for the Ur-Plant and serves as the basis for its ultimate success. In intent and manifestation, Olson‘s work would struggle to be any less pretentious than it is, but it remains propelled by a fierce and apparently unyielding creativity, and though this particular outing makes it harder to imagine where Olson might go next — whereas after Foothills Before the Mountain he seemed so primed to continue working toward one-man-band-style arrangements — that unpredictability, met head-on by such depth of songwriting, only becomes yet another asset working in Olson‘s favor.
The discography he’s built at this point is something truly special, and whether one meanders through it as through tall, pathless grasses, or follows step by step as each installment arrives, journey and destination alike seem to satisfy with a warmth all their own. Searching for the Ur-Plant winds up in a lonelier place than some of Olson‘s other offerings, but its sense of longing is resonant, beautiful, and honest. Clearly the search continues.
Posted in Reviews on December 16th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
A headphone listen reveals subtle layering in the vocals of the opener to T.G. Olson‘s latest album, La Violenza Naturale. Given the fact that he’s the same T.G. Olson who in 2013 put out The Complete Blood Meridian for Electric Drone Guitar, a six-disc drone soundtrack to Cormac McCarthy’s novel, it’s hardly the most experimental move he’s ever made, but in the context of his more folkish material, much of which is recorded live, it becomes a noteworthy bit of flourish to “Broken Trails,” however subtle it might otherwise be.
Olson, founder and frontman of Across Tundras, continues his prolific stream of solo releases with the 35-minute collection, following earlier 2016’s single From the Rocky Peaks b/w Servant to Blues (discussed here) and full-lengths The Broken End of the Deal (review here) and Quicksilver Sound (discussed here) as well as the Across Tundras EP, Home Free (discussed here), and 2015 outings including albums The Wandering Protagonist (review here) and The Boom and Bust(discussed here), which themselves followed 2014’s The Rough Embrace (review here; vinyl review here) and 2013’s The Bad Lands to Cross (discussed here) and Hell’s Half Acre (discussed here), as well as the most recent proper Across Tundras long-player, Electric Relics (review here), which is well due for a follow-up. La Violenza Naturale — the title of which seems to have been shortened from La Violenza Naturale / The Natural Violence from when it came out in November, if the revised cover art is anything to go by — finds its release in the same sans-ceremony manner as all of the above: it wasn’t on Bandcamp, and then it was.
Physical release on limited CD and tape and the potentiality of vinyl have been floated for 2017, but for now, it follows in the string of digital offerings put out there waiting for those who would find them to do so. Albeit somewhat post-modern, there’s a kind of romanticism to the notion of making a bunch of sonic postcards and tossing them into the digital ether, and maybe the persistent Americholy that Olson fuses into his material plays to that. Hearing songs like “Lonely Bright Lights” and “Sights Set on Destruction,” not only do the layered vocals of “Broken Trails” become a theme alongside the blend of lap steel and acoustic guitar, effects, organ and synth, but even compared to some of his other solo work — that is, the output he plays, records and issues himself, even going so far as to construct the physical packaging when there is any — La Violenza Naturale carries a meditative feel.
This is the case even unto the penultimate take on the Peruvian folk song “El Condor Pasa,” perhaps best known from Simon & Garfunkel‘s 1970 album, Bridge over Troubled Water and the spacious wash of instrumental post-rock guitar that follows on the closing title-track, organ or other keyboard sounding like a pan-flute as it cuts through the breadth surrounding. These turns follow the wistful “Welcome to Anywhere U.S.A.,” which is stood out for its repetitive cycles of lyrics and the slow-motion ramble that’s an indelible mark of Olson‘s songwriting, and present here even when the guitar seems to be so minimally plucked and the organ so far off in the background as to make one unsure they’re not imagining its presence in the first place. Just as likely as not that’s the intent, but the point is that as one has come to expect from Olson‘s work, the more put into listening, the more is gained from that process.
One particular highlight here is “Imemine,” which seems to play off the George Harrison/Beatles refrain, reinventing it over a bed of slide and acoustic guitar as a centerpiece after “Sights Set on Destruction” and before “To the Simples Times…” [sic], which takes on a more drawn-out feel of essentially the same blend, adding organ to the mix as a low-end backdrop and departs from some of the catchier sentiments of “Broken Trails,” “Bearing Down” or the pointedly Dylanesque “Lonely Bright Lights” at the start of the album. There’s little reassurance to be found in these tracks, or in “Sights Set on Destruction” and “Imemine,” which is fitting or their all having been recorded in Fall 2016, but if Olson is speaking to current events however vaguely, he’s well within folk bounds in so doing, and flood of guitar effects behind him in “Sights Set on Destruction” as he begs, “Please don’t come undone,” would seem to speak to an underlying threat only beginning to come to fruition. I wouldn’t mind an album of protest songs, if it came to it, but whether or not he’ll get there I wouldn’t try to predict.
The surest bet to make when it comes to Olson‘s solo output to-date is that it will exist. Over the last three-plus years, he’s found himself as a singer-songwriter and worked relentlessly to refine and develop on that level while also keeping a strong element of experimentalism to go with the traditions with which he’s in conversation. By account of his track record over the same stretch, this would seem to be an ongoing process rather than one that has hit a point of arrival at which it will rest or otherwise stagnate. La Violenza Naturale is the latest realization of a tireless creativity, and while one invariably wonders how long Olson can keep up his multiple-albums-per-year pace, it’s worth appreciating while it lasts, especially when it results in outings as rich and immersive as this.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 4th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
“Is the insincerity killing you like it’s killing me?” asks Across Tundras frontman T.G. Olson in “Broken Trails,” the opening track of his latest solo release, the full-length La Violenza Naturale / The Natural Violence. Fair enough question for a Fall 2016 recording to ask, and as he encourages listeners to “Just keep pushin’ on” on the subsequent “Bearing Down,” the album’s perspective would seem to be cemented. Sonically, this latest outing follows Olson‘s by-now-well-established solo format of headphone-worthy drone-folk, less experimental than he sometimes can be — though the closing title-track spaces out plenty — but always holding to the oragnic undercurrent that’s a hallmark of all his work to-date.
As ever, it’s a name-your-price download available through the Across Tundras Bandcamp. Limited CD and tape releases are planned, with vinyl to follow as a conditional. Probably don’t need to say it, but I’ll be buying one of those CDs when they’re available, under the reasoning that: 1) such relentless creativity is worthy of direct support; 2) I know from past experience how much effort Olson puts into those packages; and 3) if enough people shell out, he’ll do a vinyl release, and I wouldn’t mind picking up one of those either. Will probably get a review going sometime in the next however long — hopefully before he puts out another record; one never knows when it will happen, only that it will — but for now, you can check out the release info and the stream of La Violenza Naturale / The Natural Violence below. Note that Ramble Hill Farm has moved from Tennessee to Nebraska.
As seen on the internet:
Limited to 33 Cassette and Gold CDR with hand bound lyric book coming soon. All monies made from downloads go towards getting this album pressed on vinyl. Thanks for listening and your support.
Played, recorded, and mixed by T.G. Olson in the Summer and Fall of 2016 @ Ramble Hill Farm, Plattsmouth, NE. Released November 2, 2016.
El Condor Pasa written by Simon & Garfunkel. Arrangement by T.G. Olson.
T.G. Olson, La Violenza Naturale / The Natural Violence tracklisting: 1. Broken Trails 04:39 2. Bearing Down 04:05 3. Lonely Bright Lights 03:54 4. Sights Set on Destruction 03:48 5. Imemine 03:41 6. To the Simples Times… 03:32 7. Welcome to Anywhere USA 04:16 8. El Condor Pasa 03:50 9. La Violenza Naturale 03:22
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 26th, 2012 by JJ Koczan
Well, this is about the best kind of news one can get. Or at least the second best. Word came in last night from guitarist JJ Bonar that recording of the new Bloodcow album has begun. This prompted further investigating on my part of the Omaha, Nebraska, band’s Thee Facebooks page, where indeed, confirmation was had. Dig the following informativeness:
Recording of the next Bloodcow album has begun.
That settles it. Also, this:
They have a video series going that documents the recording process, but of course I couldn’t get it to work — Facebook wants me to upgrade my Flash so they can come to my house and steal my manly essence in the night — or something — but that’s fine, because it gives me an excuse to post a live clip instead. For example:
No word on a release date or whether or not the new one will be released on Crustacean Records like its most righteous predecessor, Bloodcow III: Hail Xenu. Stay tuned for more as this situation develops. In the meantime, Bloodcow will be opening for thrash legends Testament on Feb. 13. More info on that here.
