Spiritual 025 :: Lauren Barth :: Stormwating

 Spiritual Pajamas is beyond excited to announce the upcoming release of “Stormwaiting” the amazing new album from Lauren Barth

Order your copy of the limited edition vinyl or digital at:

https://laurenbarth.bandcamp.com/album/stormwaiting

Driving up the coast highway from LA, once you hit Santa Barbara you are struck with a noticeable change in landscape. It is the gateway to the Central coast, where the contours of the land begin to take on more dramatic inclines and feelings burn like wildfires. This was the childhood home of Lauren Barth, ranch living and horse riding amongst the golden and dusty open ranges that still expand through parts of California. It is at these gates of change that Lauren Barth explores on Stormwaiting, her second solo effort and first on the Spiritual Pajamas label.

Behind the musical landscape of Stormwaiting, Lauren drew from a backstory she created as inspiration. A young woman and spiritual leader of a commune, blind yet finds her way by a heightened sense of awareness, is caught between the physical world of “Rialto” and the spiritual—“Morian”. “Stormwaiting” is slang for living in Rialto and the storm is the tempest within Morian. The cult’s most important message is one of Awareness. Like her protagonist, Lauren steps through these contemplations of change coming, treading one step at a time between the physical and spiritual realms, in a bittersweet anticipation of something upon us. Each song is like a deep breath in, an exhale, a pondering of the past and a wonder about the future with an acute awareness of each passing moment.

On the title track, Lauren explores the question of who she is and where she is in juxtaposition to another, and it is these questions she answers throughout: “Leave me alone, you are the tower, I am the storm”. But follows with “I am the mountain, green grass all around... I will take you home”. Parts of her past she willingly lets go and other parts she can’t. In Leave Behind “little girl lazy coming up the road to see me, I was once a traveler too. All these old memories taken by the sea, still don’t know what path to choose. Wake me up from this dream I can’t leave behind.” On Durango, she is resigned to her own state of floating through storm:

I’m drawing shadows on walls
My baby’s still gone
And it’s much too late to go home
Guess I’ll drive to Durango
Spent so many hours awake with you 
Now I’ll never sleep, now I’ll never sleep again

The more serious moments are contrasted by some fun in the Family Chant series, a palpable impromptu romp of friends harmonizing along with Sam Blasucci from Mapache reading spoken word of an old Dark Star magazine.

Barth is a true seasoned folk music player, evoking the California folk movement of the late 1960s like David Crosby (who also hailed from the Santa Barbara area), while also calling upon British influences such as Bert Jansch, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, and Pentangle, and the later American progressive folk music of Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, and early Bonnie Raitt. In the time since her last solo record in 2017, she picked up the bass with Farmer Dave and the Wizards of the West, and with her own music gained experience with the process of composing, recording, arranging, and ultimately the confidence to allow her creative instincts to flourish. She found the perfect partner with producer Lewis Pesacov, recording in his Echo Park home studio and has worked with artists such as Pearl Charles, Best Coast, Fidlar, and also works in the world of classical and world music. Tellingly, Stormwaiting has an expansive spirit, a document of a woman and creative spirit finding and embracing her voice beyond folk music and into her own spiritual universe. 

-Scary Flowers

Release date 4/14/2023

Spiritual 026 :: Nico Georis :: A Rainbow In Curved Air

Spiritual Pajamas is honored to announce the release of Nico Georis A Rainbow In Curved Air

Order your copy of the limited edition vinyl and digital at:

https://nicogeoris.bandcamp.com/album/a-rainbow-in-curved-air-2

It was never supposed to happen. No one was supposed to reimagine Terry Riley’s A Rainbow In Curved Air - a piece of music that, until now, has existed in its own class of expression. No one was supposed to scale the perilous heights of the citadel and come back with another document of the strange festival scenes within. With the release of Nico Georis’ A Rainbow In Curved Air it’s clear now that this piece of music is a place that you can go to, a kind of astral sanctum that can be visited again and again so long as you know the mysterious paths that lead to it.

 

Doing away with the production tricks used on Riley’s original recording (just intonation, mirror image delay, half-speed tracking of all lead parts) Nico Georis confronts the central seven time theme with a new transparency that gradually complexifies into astonishing Persian carpet displays of patterned musical awareness. This is music of the plenum and not the void: it is teeming with forms that behave in ways that recall descriptions of elaborately jeweled DMT hyperspace; sonic shapes that are driven by the pure uplift and force of infinite, unconstrained autotransformation. In this way it is similar to the original but the pace is way less manic, way more listenable as it rides forward on a calm surge of dazzling zero point energy.

 

The three other songs on the record are Georis originals. Vapor is a moment of twilight abstraction, a plant music duet that features Nico playing along with the plaintive washes of sound produced by a cannabis plant connected to a biodata sonification device. This song was composed spontaneously as it was broadcast live over Nico’s Big Sur based pirate channel, Milky Way Radio. Side B contains two remarkable songs, Hot Slots and 777, that are built mostly out of samples of the slot machine sounds. They are both lush holograms of hallucinated beauty and convey something about the spirit of luck, abundance and possibility.

 

This is music for feast days that celebrate the creative selection and birth of new realities.  We are just beginning to remember how full music can be, how freighted with spirit forms and attention. We are just now becoming civilized enough for the ecstasy of this music. Now that our species has had enough time to experience this kind of fullness we are perched on the edge of this realization:

 

There has only ever been one song.

 

Occasionally, with adequate preparation and clarity of vision, a musician can usher their consciousness, shamanic, into communion with the living texture of this song. If they survive (it can be dangerous!) and if they have the presence of mind to push the record button at the beginning of their journey then they may return with something remarkable, an account of what they experienced in that other place. Music like a kind of phosphene twilight language autotransforming in the dark, songs written in rainbow black fire on white fire, an inaudible flapping of wings. This is one of those rare documents. Forbidden yet welcoming it spins before you with the uncanny familiarity of a stranger smiling at you in a crowd. Drop the needle and enter again into the spiral stream of giddy, tessellated sensations. It is waiting for you here. Now listen.

Matt Baldwin

Release date 7/29/2022

Spiritual 027 :: OSEES :: Live in Big Sur

Spiritual Pajamas is thrilled to announce the vinyl release of OSEES - Live at Henry Miller Library, Big Sur

Preorder your copy of the limited edition vinyl at:

https://ohsees.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-henry-miller-library-big-sur

"When we finally decided to bite the bullet during Covid’s initial shut down and subsequent clubs shuttering, we thought we should play some lovely and close to our heart spots to keep it interesting.

Henry Miller library fits that bill perfectly.  Lovely place, lovely people & general good vibes. A perfect place for us to set up and record.  Also, included here are the covers we did because why the fuck not."

"We’ve dipped deep into the dark waters of our song-sack of holding and found several more never-before-performed-live tunes & paired them up with some oldies we’ve knocked the dust off of, as well as some fan favorites and general surprises to make the merry very.  That’s right, we’ve been paying attention. Recorded from dusk till dawn 2 at the gorgeous Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. Same killer crew, similar killer vibes. An enchanting pre-holiday evening to tell you that we miss and love you. Play it loud and have one on us. And keep your chin up for goodness sake.

Be well out there

OSEES

Release date 6/3/2022

Spiritual 020 - Farmer Dave Scher - Speak Of Love

Spiritual Pajamas is honored to announce the new EP from Farmer Dave Scher

Order your copy of the limited editon CD or digital download at:

https://farmerdavescher.bandcamp.com/album/speak-of-love

This is a message of love from the West.

Farmer Dave Scher (Beachwood Sparks, The Skiffle Players, Kurt Vile and the Violators) has a message to send. And that is simply — love. Speak of Love, Farmer Dave’s new 4-song EP on Spiritual Pajamas is woven with the one simple truth of love in both words and music. A different state of consciousness awaits if you listen, close your eyes and imagine.

The story of the Speak of Love EP starts some years ago, when Neil Young appeared on television and spoke directly into the camera with a telepathic gaze and asked “Who is going to stand up for the land? Who is going to sing for mother earth?”  Farmer Dave took this as a direct call to action. Seeing an alternate future of a barren, scorched earth that was used and thrown away, he decided to introduce a different path into his music. After spending time with plant medicines in Peru, Farmer Dave came back to California, dispatched most of his earthly possessions to live in an Ojai commune, wandered the wilderness outside of Los Angeles and found his own cosmic cave to meditate and work out this batch of songs devoted to Mother Earth. The result is a Farmer Dave rave up intergalactic honky tonk -- a phantasmagoric intersection of past and present where aliens dance with the Chumash and the Santa Ana winds still blow ancient spirits through the strip malls of Venice Beach. And Farmer Dave, the modern Californio time traveler, can be seen trekking down the coast copiloted by Alan, his pet bearded dragon.

Speak of Love was recorded at Electric Duck, Kelley Stoltz’s studio in San Francisco’s Mission district, Earthstar Creation Center and The Dojo in Venice Beach, and Golden Void Studios in Van Nuys.  Along with sounds from the Amazon rainforest and cetaceans, Farmer Dave is joined by friends Kurt Vile and fellow Violator Rob Laakso, and members of The Skiffle Players; Cass McCombs, Dan Horne and Aaron Sperske.

During a time when truth is hard to find, Farmer Dave’s words speak an eternal truth, arriving at a perfect time to deliver his message of love.  Plant the seeds, brothers and sisters…the loving, dreaming kind.

Release date 10/2/2020

Spiritual 024 - The Skiffle Players - Skiff

Spiritual Pajamas is honored to announce the new LP from The Skiffle Players.

Order your copy of the vinyl, CD or digital download at:

https://theskiffleplayers.bandcamp.com/album/skiff

Their second LP, “SKIFF” is a new direction for The Skiffle Players. Now, they all sing and write. There is NO LEADER.

Recorded at Infinitespin Recorders in Van Nuys CA, with engineer Matt “Linny” Linesch, SKIFF begins with a bold opening; the Farmer Dave penned ‘Cara’, heavy information for the soul. Then, into classic Cass insanity on ‘Local Boy’, a wild ride on the run from the cops. Third is a touching tribute to a bygone companion, ‘Miss It When It’s Gone’, written and led by Neal.

SKIFF’s revolving perspective continues to bounce around, leaving no apparent land to stand upon. In that, it is deeply subversive. For there is nothing to defend, but the ability to transform and imagine.

The album continues to unfold back to Cass with a satire on justice, ‘The Law Offices of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe’. From the saloon ‘Long Horns, Long Necks, Long Legs’, to the rainforest ‘Herbamera’. Neal blasts in again with the sun-bleached rambler, ‘Los Angeles Alleyway’. Farmer Dave’s ‘Skiffleman’ “sings a song for everyone”. Cass plays with memory in a song about coming of age in the Bay Area on ‘Oakland Scottish Rite Temple Waltz’. Penultimately, ‘Santa Fe’, an elliptical broadside about materialism and waste. SKIFF concludes by pushing off again, out into the familiar waters of a traditional skiffle number, ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, each member taking a perhaps all-too casual solo.

This is acoustic dance music at its finest. It is also refreshingly contradictory. Irreverent and mystical. Deeply personal and communal. Traditional and profane. The ever revolving and disintegrating ship known as SKIFF.

STORY OF THE SKIFFLE PLAYERS.

Once upon a time, Mollusk Surf shop asked Farmer Dave Scher to put together a band for a concert in Big Sur. Thus the Skiffle Players were born, selected from friends of both Californias - Northern (Cass, Dan) and Southern (Dave and Aaron) plus a New Jersey transplant to Ventura County (Neal) - each meeting at the metaphorical heart of the state, the mythical SUR. The origin concept of the band was to create a new folk fabric from the ashes of tradition - whatever the ashes of tradition means to you.

WHAT IS SKIFFLE?

A matter of debate.  Although The Skiffle Players approach the definition as, broadly, ‘street music’.  Busking. Singing for one’s supper.  Entertaining the passers-by. Make em dance all the way home. The term may have its origin in Memphis jug band music of the 20s. It seems to have emigrated to England with the US soldiers during WW2, and was taken up by a new generation, beginning with Lonnie Donegan, ending with The Quarrymen aka The Beatles. The term then somewhat disappeared.

SO, THEN, WHAT IS WEST COAST SKIFFLE?

The Skiffle Players are the very ash to explore that question. From the beginning, no rules. No song off-limits. Everybody sings. No idea is silly enough, for sometimes the absurd is the very device for a cataclysmic rift in the fabric of sound. Of course, it can also end in hilarious catastrophe, and often does - a necessary, cosmic comedic consequence to this fearless approach. Like Kurt Vonnegut and Bo Diddley sharing a surfboard, something interesting is going to happen.

Personnel (in alphabetical order):

Neal Casal - acoustic guitar
Dan Horne - bass
Cass McCombs - acoustic guitar, harmonium, banjo
Farmer Dave Sher - melodica, lap steel, keyboard
Aaron Sperske - drums

Check out each of these musicians’ history. It is vast. From Beachwood Sparks to Cass McCombs’ ten solo albums to Circles Around The Sun, The Skiffle Players are the sum of these adventures.

Release date is 10/26/2018