Stream Vashti Bunyan "Heartleap" on Pitchfork Advance through October 6th

You can stream Vashti Bunyan's new Heartleap album in its entirety via Pitchfork Advance through October 6th.

The CD ships this week, and the vinyl and FLAC/MP3 download will be available on October 14th.

Preorder the album on  iTunes and receive a free track, "Across the Water," immediately!

Vashti Bunyan "Across The Water" track stream available now

Noisey is premiering the first track off Vashti Bunyan's Heartleap, "Across The Water". 

Heartleap will be released in North American by the DiCristina label on October 7th.

More information has been posted on Pitchfork, FACT, and, of course, here.

Vashti Bunyan's Heartleap released October 7th on DiCristina!

Nine years after ‘Lookaftering’, her last album of new material, legendary British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan returns with a breathtaking new LP. Recorded largely in her home studio, ‘Heartleap’ is a unique and entrancing collection of ten songs forming what Vashti is adamant will be her final album.

Vashti’s third album follows her rediscovery - after thirty years in the wilderness - with the 2000 re-release of ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ (a bona fide cult classic that made # 53 in the Observer Music monthly’s ‘top 100 British albums of all time’), and the critical success of 2005’s ‘Lookaftering’. With ‘Heartleap’ she has delivered an album with a classic sound, where – for the first time – she herself has been in control of the whole process, from writing and arranging to playing and recording. Working predominantly from a studio set up in her Edinburgh home, the record was slowly pieced together, and reveals an artist at her peak, capturing her songs within fluid settings that masterfully marry content and form.

Both ‘JADD’  and ‘Lookaftering’ saw Vashti‘s songs arranged and framed by others. Joe Boyd’s production and Robert Kirby’s arranging of the former remain timelessly classy, whilst Max Richter’s elegantly beautiful production of Lookaftering was enhanced by contributions from a raft of supporting artists - all eagerly adding their colours. Vashti is justly proud of ‘Lookaftering’, but ‘Heartleap’ is a more personal record, standing solely on the merits and patient endeavour of its author rather than being buoyed by and filtered through the cachet and collaborative creativity of a powerful supporting cast.

The vast majority of ‘Heartleap’ was recorded and edited by Vashti, who “wanted it to be more akin to my very first recordings, the ones even before ‘Diamond Day’. I wanted to try to emerge from the shelter of others and stand out in the open. It would have been much easier had I worked with a producer and an engineer - I would not have had to spend so much time on editing - but that’s been the interesting part. If I’d taken these songs and gone into a studio with them they might have turned out very differently, perhaps more 'produced' - but not as near to how I hear them for myself.”

Recording her vocals when no one else was around to overhear - freed Vashti up to deliver more confident performances. Equally, working without the induced pressures of studio deadlines enabled her to craft it slowly and lovingly in her own time, weaving together tracks out of numerous takes. Predominantly guitar or piano led - with additional instrumentation building throughout - the songs have no underpinning bass-line or percussion, giving each instrument and voice the chance to pace itself.

Where the synthetic instrumentation on Vashti’s ‘Lookaftering’ demos was rejected in favour of recording the warmth and organic nature of real acoustic instruments, ‘Heartleap’ retains those electronic voices, alongside  studio-recorded string and recorder arrangements  - the two mixed in a delicate balance between the synthesized and the organic. Freely admitting that she can’t actually play the piano, Vashti built the keyboard parts from single notes and multiple one-handed takes. No-one else would have made it or played it that way and it’s that voice, her own voice, that helps lend the record its power and marks it out as distinctive.

 “The whole point of the album was finally to learn a way that would enable me to record the music that is in my head, by myself. I neither read nor write music, nor can I play piano with more than one hand at a time, but I have loved being able to work it all out for myself and make it sound the way I wanted. I’ve built these songs over years. The album wouldn't have happened any other way. Sometimes when I replace the arrangements with real instruments they don't work in the same way. The extended notes of the clarinet on the song ‘Heartleap’ for instance could not be played on a real clarinet. I can't 'play' a musician playing their instrument - I can't make them play each note as I want it, but with a keyboard and a music program I am the player."

Concise as ever, Vashti’s lyrics open out a series of locket-like miniatures - stories of family and friends, lives and loves, memories, dreams and realities; of differences in perception and the gaps between people / meanings / understandings; of coping, getting by, surviving. “All the songs are based on real stories or real people, 'Mother' especially. 'Blue Shed' was written when the house was still full of young people slamming doors and yelling. (I do miss them now). 'Gunpowder ' is about an ex-partner with whom communication can still be difficult."  There is no vast sweep or ambitious stabbing at the grandiose in her lyric writing, yet in their honesty these close-focused articulations draw you in and resonate with heartfelt emotions and universal truths.

The luminous musical arrangements act with the lyrics illustratively - ‘Jellyfish’ ripples and floats from side to side, “and is soft apart from the vibraphone which is quite harsh - like the dream it's about. The kalimba and the tumbling guitars in Across the Water are to give the song the sound of waves on shingle, and the piano on 'Mother' is to sound a little like the old un-tuned upright piano I overheard my mother playing sometimes, 'briefly unbound' from her duties as wife and mother."

Recording in studios in California, New York and London - but mostly alone in her own studio - it took in total seven years to put together these ten songs. The first was written in 2007, the last just two months before mastering. A hiatus in recording came with the untimely passing of Robert Kirby in 2009. Robert had arranged three songs on ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ and the pair had just reconnected and planned to work on new arrangements together - just weeks before he died. It would be another two years before she took the decision that she must arrange the music herself, with Robert always in mind. The subsequent three years saw her gradually picking the thread back up and working with renewed purpose. Slowly more songs found their way out of her. Gems like ‘The Boy’ - which she’d sat on, fretted over and intended to ditch - were prised from oblivion. Seven became ten and those around her finally began to really believe that an end was in sight. The right final mix frustratingly eluded her until the album magically came together in a week in May 2014 - when it was balanced and mastered beautifully at the hands of mixing engineer Martin Korth - and mastering genius Mandy Parnell at her Black Saloon studios in London.

The album’s striking cover artwork is once again taken from a painting by Vashti’s daughter, Whyn Lewis, and forms a neat companion to her hare painting featured on ‘Lookaftering’, giving the impression (besides both album’s titles being portmanteaus) of a pair of bookends. Whyn describes this painting (titled 'Hart’s Leap’) as being “about getting away unscathed… about confidence and self-assuredness, and wisdom. The deer is leaping forward while looking backwards - and it has a little grin. It is said that deer make a large bound of joy when they know they are escaping. The deer is linked with the deerhound shown on the deer’s collar - what it has been escaping from. The deerhound in this case really is just allegory for the thing that chases or hounds you. Life is most appreciated when it is challenged.”

One of the final songs to be written, the gorgeously gauzy, autobiographical title track came to Vashti all of a sudden in March this year, as she was gazing at Whyn's painting. Recorded straight off, with only minor changes made in the final mix, it closes the album perfectly. A bittersweet song, it cryptically catalogues and a whole life’s worth of loving, losing, letting go, getting through; of heartbreaks and happiness and the lulls in between – through a minimal, modular, repetitive structure with recourse to just a handful of compound word variations - surges and tugs between head and heart. Simultaneously aching and hopeful, it looks back with both pain and joy, with resigned acceptance.  If it truly is to be the final word on a final album, then it is an utterly fitting and devastatingly beautiful one.

Like the deer on the cover painting, ‘Heartleap’ moves gracefully, enchantingly. Overcoming adversity through sheer willpower, its very existence is a dazzling triumph.

‘Heartleap’ will be released on FatCat in UK / Europe on October 6th and in North America via DiCristina on October 7th.

Vashti will play a run of UK tour dates in smaller settings with guitarist Gareth Dickson (her first since 2010) in support of the album, with more dates to be added in early 2015.

UK Tour Dates:

07 Oct - MAC, Birmingham, UK
08 Oct - St. Pancras Church, London, UK
09 Oct - St. Pancras Church, London, UK
11 Oct - The Band Room, Farndale, UK
12 Oct - St. Philip’s Church, Manchester, UK

Retiver Show Tonight.

What could be better than Andy Cabic and Goldie Hawn?

MV & EE January Residency @ Zebulon.

MV & EE will be doing a Sunday night residency at Zebulon in Brooklyn NY (258 Wythe Avenue) during the month of January. They will be doing 3 sets nightly, starting off acoustic, then electric and ending the evening with some free freakiness. January 8th/15th/22nd. Don't miss it.

Vashti Bunyan Movie Playing In LA Tomorrow.

Happen to be hanging out in Los Angeles tomorrow (6/11/09)? A documentary "Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before" will be playing at Silent Movie Theater (611 N Fairfax Ave) as part of their "F is For Folk" series. The film retraces Vashti’s musical past and features interviews with Andrew Loog Oldham, Devendra Banhart, Max Richter and others. More info can be found HERE.

Getting Up Close and Personal With Matteah Baim.

There's a great interview with Matteah Baim posted on The Naturalismo.com right now. Here's a little taster:

"...I try my best to let the songs write themselves. There are times I’m more successful at this then others. I work with a lot of notebooks and demos before I go into the studio to map out the pieces. Fluidity and organization seem to go hand in hand when it comes to recording. At times, you have to throw some of those maps away but for whatever reason they have to be there to throw out...."

Read the whole interview here.

Crosby, Young, Valentine & Elder - MV & EE Review on Dusted.

Dusted Reviews
Artist: MV & EE with the Golden Road
Album: Drone Trailer
Label: DiCristina Stair Builders
Review date: Feb. 5, 2009

When listening to the prodigious output of Matt Valentine and Erika Elder, I always end up reaching some fairly simple, yet somehow confusing conclusions, particularly about the MV & EE ‘vibe,’ if you’ll excuse so gauche a term. Simply put, they’re one of the few duos/groups extant who manage to combine a communal, rural take on rock ‘n’ roll with the kind of heavyweight mystique that means you’re never entirely sure what they’re going to drop next. Staying faithful to your art while remaining open to what falls from the sky can make for a rewarding (if at times befuddling) relationship between performers and their audience.

You’ll also have a pretty different take on MV & EE depending how deeply you’ve been chasing the trip. If you skim their ‘major’ releases (for the DiCristina, Time Lag and Ecstatic Peace labels, amongst others) you’ll get some pretty good indicators as to how their thing’s developing, but burrow down into the sodden earth of their Child Of Microtones CD-Rs and you’ll end up with a more honest – or at least, more rigorous – reflection of the MV & EE totality. And I’m not about to encourage sending anyone broke from chasing limited editions (particularly regarding our current socio-economic impasse), but that expanded context lets MV & EE really flower. (Though the answer to that key question – how many live recordings [now taking on the totemic status of MV & EE’s “Dark Star”] do you need to hear? – is simple: all of ‘em.)

Drone Trailer comes off as one of MV & EE’s richest conciliations of primal rock impulse and agrarian drift – the kind of record that a confused major label would have leaked out into the world in the early 1970s, the last time the underground had any chance of seriously warping the mainstream milieu. There’s something in the whole deal that reminds me of a small clutch of hazed-out solo-record masterpieces – a touch of David Crosby’s If Only I Could Remember My Name here, an unhinged Neil Young on his most maxist folk/grunt form there – and traces of other acts who’ve picked up on that loner/loser mood and moved it along, from Opal (in the slow motion sway of the title track) through J Mascis’s solo navel gazing (“The Hungry Stones”).

It’s MV’s guitar that keeps things moving along. His playing’s a little more reined-in than I’d expect, but there’s something nice in the way he perpetually infers the kind of full temporal-psychic expansion he can reach at his most ‘out’ without really breaking the mold. Valentine’s restraint is a potent device here; there are some beautiful stretches in the title track, where Valentine’s playing tangles with Doc Dunn’s pedal steel, weaving through chord changes that sound like the song taking sharp breaths due to a change of altitude. If you’re looking for a song to add to the Valentine ‘canon,’ to slot alongside “Sky Ain’t High” and “Get Right Church,” then “Drone Trailer” is the latest addition. But it helps that it’s surrounded by great material, like the woozy, unraveled “Weatherhead Hollow,” or the late night ritual of “Huna Cosm.”

Chalk it up to reaping the rewards of single-mindedness and dedication – this one’s a winner. Then hunt down a batch of those live recordings ‘from the taper’s pit.’ They’re a whole other universe unto themselves.

By Jon Dale

Getting mellow in Santiago de Compostela last year:

Matteah Baim Joins Antony & The Johnsons Tour.

Photo by Lauren Dukoff

Surprise, Matteah Baim was asked by Antony to support a protion of his upcoming tour that starts next week. Fortune favors the bold!

02/02 Philadelphia, PA @ Keswick Theatre
02/03 Washington, DC @ Sixth and I Historic Synagogue
02/04 Colombus, OH @ Southern Theatre
02/08 Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse
02/12 Chicago, IL @ Vic Theatre
02/13 Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theatre
02/14 Minneapolis, MN @ Pantages Theatre

MV & EE "Chunky" Live Review On TMT.

Spectre Folk / Kurt Vile / MV & EE / Pink Reason / Christian DeRoeck [Monster Island; Brooklyn, NY]
Tiny Mix Tapes original review

“Do you want to hear it mellow or do you want a chunky version like Lil Wayne does?” Matt Valentine asked the crowd gathered in Monster Island’s basement, just a few steps from the East River. “Chunky!” someone shouted from the corner of the room. Of course, drawing a link between the New Orleans rhymester and the "freak-folk" of MV & EE might seem a little absurd at first, but since Valentine brought it up, let’s roll with it: both are quite prolific, releasing a spectrum of releases that range from DIY to major label-linked affairs, and both have a morphing sonic territory that includes that very realm of chunkiness.

Valentine and Erica Elder were joined by two percussionists for their set, but the chunkiness really came from Valentine’s guitar stylings, which, whether acoustic or electric, have a thick, deliberate, but also natural sound. The duo focused on their latest release, Drone Trailer, kicking off with its opening track “Anyway” and finishing up with a swirling take on the title number, which progressed from a blanket of banjo noise to a soaring electric guitar outro.

MV & EE were by no means the only notable act of the night, though. Christian DeRoeck, formerly of Meneguar and Woods, kicked off the night, and Pink Reason followed, amping things up with dual guitars and drums. After Valentine and Elder did their thing, Kurt Vile did his: effortless but intricate folk held together with grit and simple honesty. Spectre Folk (Pete Nolan of Magik Markers) brought things to a close with tinny percussion loops, noodling guitar wanderings, and occasional vocal spurts. The crowd had thinned by this point, but Nolan meandered on as chatter floated from the back of the room and Valentine and Elder lounged and listened nearby. He was a spectre to some, but not all. And that seemed perfectly fine with him.

by Lincoln Doolittle

Stereogum Announces Upcoming MV & EE Release.

MV & EE sneak preview song download and feature on Stereogum today.

Prolific deepwoods Vermonters Matt Valentine (who played in the excellently ramshackle Tower Recordings) and Erika Elder are back with Drone Trailer. They're not shy about releasing recordings (together and apart), but the collections often show up in limited runs or on smaller labels. The forthcoming six-song collection Drone is out via the (slightly) easier to locate DiCristina. On it, the duo's backed by three-dude strong Golden Road, as you should be able to deduce after listening to the dense, full-band psych of cathartic opener "Anyway." We asked Valentine to unpack the lyrics. Let us know if it helps.

What inspired "Anyway"'s "anyway I can" theme? Y'know "space" was once the end all for the conqueroo ... Now that scene is a mere blip on the sonar of Spit James. We hinted at it sometime back with our "Meditations On Payday," that rub was as much Mississippi John Hurt as it was Rip Torn. Now we gotta go beyond nomenclature into some sorta '"any" "way" -- the "many are one" philosophy, you'd be as grateful as we if your "many" were a true singular "one," or one within a pair. It all gets in there anyway.

And, what was the spaceman's master plan? The spaceman could be Bill Lee. In his "space" the main aim to the end of the game is not allow anyone "on" base. That's the key, like salts to alchemists and the Masonic depth to baseball, turning "on" has always been where it is at. Tesla, the energy monopolies ... dig the idea of standing tall, as in the indian chief, or the inverse of laying low. You "can't stand" can be many rooms, mebbe the Velvets said it best ..."I Can't Stand It Anymore." Dig their castle, we are just a mere moat in this thing, swimming as best we can. This song is about a river and a life raft.

Drone Trailer is out 1/20 on DiCristina.

Vashti Bunyhan NPR's Day To Day Feature 10/24/08.

The condensed history of Vashti Bunyan on NPR's Day To Day.

Vashti Bunyan: 40 Years Later, A Musical Rebirth
By Christian Bordal
Original post with audio interview link.

Day To Day October 24, 2008 - Back in the mid-'60s, Andrew Oldham, manager of The Rolling Stones, saw something promising in a quiet young singer-songwriter named Vashti Bunyan. So he brought her into the studio to record a single called "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind," written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Oldham himself presided over the session.

"Oh, yeah, he was there," Bunyan says. "Mick Jagger was there. Everybody was there. But nobody really spoke to me, and I certainly didn't speak to anybody. I was way too shy."

Bunyan says she's always been shy.

"Though I had a huge ego about my songs," she says. "I thought these were great and everybody should listen to these. But as a person, I had no way of persuading anybody. I was just way too shy and pretty much merged with the wallpaper, I think."

Bunyan's shyness comes through in her soft, tentative singing. She says that, despite years spent trying to overcome it, singing more strongly just doesn't suit her.

She spent three years recording demos and singles with Oldham and others, but in spite of her own great expectations, she made little headway. In 1967, she says, she decided that she'd had enough.

But if Bunyan's arrival on the London music scene had caused little fanfare, the method of her departure three years later did raise some eyebrows — if only those of her parents. Bunyan had been living with her boyfriend in the woods behind his art school, but they were kicked out. So they decided to move to Scotland, via an antiquated form of transport.

As she and her boyfriend made their slow pilgrimage to Scotland by horse and cart — "Horses don't need petrol," she says — Bunyan says she decided she was done with recording, though she continued to write new songs.

But a chance meeting with the well-known folk-music producer Joe Boyd convinced her to go back into the studio once more, if only to document her journey and record her new songs.

The result was Just Another Diamond Day — an album that, much like her earlier efforts, hardly caused a ripple in the pop-music marketplace.

"People dismissed it as nursery rhymes for children and being very insignificant," Bunyan says. "And I just thought, 'Oh, well, I've made another mistake. They must be right. It must be rubbish. I'll never pick up a guitar again. So I didn't."

And she didn't.

"It was like taking a whole part of myself and putting it in a cupboard and putting a padlock on it," she says. "It was painful."

Instead, Bunyan spent the next 30 years raising a family and farm animals in rural Scotland.

Then, a few years ago, while surfing the Web, Bunyan says she was amazed to find that the music she'd given up for good was actually alive and well. In fact, Just Another Diamond Day and other early recordings were becoming cult classics to a new generation of musicians, and in 2004, that album was reissued. In 2005, Bunyan released her first batch of new songs in 35 years on a thoughtful, bittersweet album called Lookaftering.

"When I first got on the Internet and realized that Diamond Day hadn't just disappeared off the face of the earth and that people were still listening to the songs, it made me able to pick up my guitar again and get some kind of meaning back from it for myself," she says.

Bunyan says she's still shy and still bedeviled by issues of self-confidence. But, more than 40 years after she took her first tentative steps down the path toward a musical life, she's now finally leading it. She set up a small home studio, and, with no more children in the house, is hard at work on her next batch of quiet, carefully crafted little folk-pop poems.

"I'm writing about more particular things: more particular emotions and relationships," she says. "I'm just trying to dig a little deeper, maybe? But I've only got five songs so far. So it's kind of hard to tell."

Vashti Bunyan Song In Reebok Commercial.

Reebok TV commercial featuring Vashti Bunyan's "Train Song" - stranger things have happened on prime time.

David Fricke Reviews Vashti Bunyan For Rolling Stone.

Vashti Bunyan
Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (Singles And Demos 1964 To 1967)
DiCristina
Online review

This set's title song is most notable not for the singer but the composers: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who gave the song - more folk-pop sweetness than "Brown Sugar" - to their producer Andrew Loog Oldham, who made it the debut release by his protégée, Vashti Bunyan. Today, Bunyan is a goddess to the freak-folk community, due to the sturdy beauty of her 1970 album, Just Another Diamond Day. But at the time of these rarities, Bunyan was part Joan Baez, part Marianne Faithfull, with a virginal alto floating through Pet Sounds-like madrigals. The unreleased singles "Winter Is Blue" and "Coldest Night of the Year" and the loping daydream "17 Pink Sugar Elephants," from a '66 home tape, have the exotic-minstrel flair of '66 Donovan, while a CD of 1964 demos - Banyan alone, plucking guitar on her originals - is warm juvenilia. The diamonds came later.

DAVID FRICKE

Vashti Bunyan Compilation, Single & Shindig Footage

Check out Uncut Magazine's review of the upcoming Vashti Bunyan early recordings compilation. Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind will be released on double CD and deluxe gatefold sleeve double vinyl at the end of October. In advance of the compilation release DiCristina has reissued a limited pressing of Vashti's debut 7” single of 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind' / 'I Want To Be Alone' which was originally released on the Decca label. Both songs were written by rock alumni Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and feature the then session musicians Jimmy Page & John freakin-Mahavishnu-McLaughlin. Below are two great promo clips of Vashti Bunyan appearing on Shindig to promote the single. Good stuff.