News | Constellation Records

COMING SOON

	In Another LifeSANDRO PERRICD / 180gLP / DL
CST136	pre-order

	TransitAUTOMATISME180gLP / DL
CST135	pre-order

	Plurality TripJOYFULTALK180gLP / DL
CST134	pre-order

OUT NOW

	Bush LadyAlanis ObomsawinCD /180gLP / DL
CST133	order

	QuieterCarla Bozulich180gLP / DL
CST132	order

	Slowly ParadiseEric Chenaux180gLP / DL
CST131	order

	Stand Above The StreamsJason Sharp180gLP / DL
CST130	order

	Pissing StarsEfrim Manuel Menuck180gLP / DL
CST129	order

	Mechanics Of DominionEsmerineCD / 180gLP / DL
CST128	order

	2Off World 180gLP / DL
CST127	order

	"Luciferian Towers"Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD / 180gLP / DL
CST126	order

	SelflessJoni VoidCD / 180gLP / DL
CST125	order

	Pools Of LightJessica MossCD / 180gLP / DL
CST124	order

	A Common TruthSaltlandCD / 180gLP / DL
CST123	order

	The Infected MassThose Who Walk AwayCD / 180gLP / DL
CST122	order

	Pas pire pop, I Love You So MuchAvec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche CD / 180gLP / DL
CST121	order

	Stubborn Persistent IllusionsDo Make Say ThinkCD / 2x180gLP / DL
CST120	order

RECENT

	A Boat Upon Its BloodJason Sharp CD / 180gLP / DL
CST119	order

	Momentform AccumulationsAutomatisme CD / 180gLP / DL
CST118	order

	1Off World CD / 180gLP / DL
CST117	order

	Lost VoicesEsmerine CD / 180gLP / DL
CST116	order

	Sun Coming DownOught CD / 180gLP / DL
CST115	order

	If He Dies, If If If If If IfJerusalem In My Heart CD / 180gLP / DL
CST114	order

	Never were the way she wasColin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld CD / 180gLP / DL
CST113	order

	SkullsplitterEric Chenaux CD / 180gLP / DL
CST112	order

	'Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress'Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD / 180gLP / DL
CST111	order

	COIN COIN Chapter Three: river run theeMatana Roberts CD / 180gLP / DL
CST110	order

	NervousSiskiyou CD / 180gLP / DL
CST109	order

	Once More With Feeling...Ought 10" / DL
CST108	order

	Last ExLast Ex CD / 180gLP / DL
CST107	order

	Zubberdust!Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche CD / 180gLP / DL
CST106	order

	Hang On To Each OtherThee SIlver Mt. ZIon Memorial Orchestra 150gEP / DL
CST105	order

	Shortwave NightsHiss Tracts CD / 180gLP / DL
CST104	order

	More Than Any Other DayOught CD / 180gLP / DL
CST103	order

	BoyCarla Bozulich CD / 180gLP / DL
CST102	order

	Spaced Out EPSandro Perri 180gEP / DL
CST101	order

	Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On EverythingThee SIlver Mt. ZIon Memorial Orchestra CD / 180gLP / DL
CST099	order

	COIN COIN Chapter Two: Mississippi MoonchileMatana Roberts CD / 180gLP / DL
CST098	order

	The Big MangoLand of Kush CD / 180gLP / DL
CST097	order

	DalmakEsmerine CD / 180gLP / DL
CST096	order

	Hero BrotherSarah Neufeld CD / 180gLP / DL
CST095	order

	I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of UsSaltland CD / 180gLP / DL
CST094	order

	Mo7it Al-Mo7itJerusalem In My Heart CD / 180gLP / DL
CST093	order

	New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More LightColin Stetson CD / 2x180gLP / DL
CST092	order

	Transit of VenusHangedup & Tony Conrad 180gLP/ DL
CST091	order

	Affaires ÉtrangèresPacha 180gLP/ DL
CST090	order

	Vamp IreKanada 70 180gLP/ DL
CST089	order

	Guitar & VoiceEric Chenaux CD / 180gLP / DL
CST088	order

	DevastatesElfin Saddle CD / 180gLP / DL
CST087	order

	The Something RainTindersticks CD / 180gLP / DL
CST086	order

	Impossible SpacesSandro Perri CD / 180gLP / DL
CST085	order

	Those Who Didn't RunColin Stetson 10" / DL
CST084	order

	Keep Away the DeadSiskiyou CD / 180gLP / DL
CST083	order

	In Animal TongueEvangelista CD / 180gLP / DL
CST082	order

	'ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND! Godspeed You! Black Emperor 180gLP+7"/ CD / DL
CST081	order

396

Constellation Artists at Suoni Per Il Popolo 2018

Suoni Per Il Popolo, one of Montreal's most creative and eclectic festivals, is just around the corner and Constellation is excited to present a series of shows at this year's edition. Local fans can catch Esmerine, Jessica Moss, Jason Sharp, Efrim Manuel Menuck, and many more throughout the month of June as part of Suoni 2018. Wildly diverse yet impeccably curated, this is one of our favourite times of the year and we encourage fellow Montrealers to get out there and support this fine festival and the stellar array of artists it presents.

Here's where you can find Constellation artists at this year's Suoni Per Il Popolo:

7 June
Everyday Ago Presents:
JONINA, Joyful Joyful, Xuan Ye, Sarah Pagé + Maya Kuroki @ La Vitrola

8 June
Jason Sharp + Adam Basanta, Christian Carrière, Martin Rodriguez @ Eastern Bloc

9 June
JS Truchy Noise Meditation @ Never Apart

14 June
Efrim Manuel Menuck, Jessica Moss + Charles-André Coderre @ La Sala Rossa

16 June
Esmerine, Thus Owls @ La Vitrola

17 June
Sophie Trudeau + Michaela Grill, Samara Lubelski + Marcia Bassett @ Casa del Popolo

For more info, see the Suoni Per Il Popolo website.

Eric Chenaux's full Constellation discography now on Bandcamp

We're pleased to announce that Eric Chenaux's full Constellation discography is now available on Bandcamp.

For listeners new to Chenaux's music, who may have found themselves beguiled by his most recent and acclaimed album Slowly Paradise, this is a great way to discover the range of experimental folk, post-jazz, avant-garde balladry and fried guitar improv that has cemented Eric's reputation as one of the most distinctive, playful and iconoclastic disruptors of the singer-songwriter tradition

Spanning six full-length albums of inscrutable exploratory depth and strange hybrid beauty on Constellation over the past twelve years, Eric's work covers a range of styles but is unified by his dulcet voice and his utterly unique, virtuosic guitar technique. This is music that will reward open ears, and we encourage you to dive into the diverse catalog of this sweet and exceptional songwriter.

Bandcamp is far and away the most artist-friendly platform among an otherwise deeply demoralising landscape of major online music services. By supporting Constellation and its artists on Bandcamp, you are ensuring that most of your money makes its way back to these artists – and are helping to sustain an essential alternative online music distribution platform whose business ethics and economics truly value small/independent artists and labels.

Eric Chenaux's discography on Bandcamp is also specially priced as a bundle – buy all six albums in the digital download format of your choice (including uncompressed 16-bit .wav files, which are not available in Constellation's own webshop) and benefit from a bulk discount.

NOW UNTIL 30 JUNE 2018
ERIC CHENAUX DIGITAL BUNDLE AT 50% OFF
SIX ALBUMS FOR $27.00 (USD)
ericchenaux.bandcamp.com

Slowly Paradise

Drawing from Eric Chenaux’s rich history in avant-folk, post-jazz, improvisation and balladry, Slowly Paradise is a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. Chenaux grapples with the relationship between improvisation and structure in unique, idiosyncratic ways, and the resulting juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice. This stunning new record, showcasing Chenaux’s singular voice and guitar stylings, is being celebrated as the most assured and essential solo work from this inimitable, consummate songwriter.

Skullsplitter

Skullsplitter is the impressive album that confirms Chenaux's singular aesthetic: genuine, natural, unaffected vocals gliding through slow, smoky melodies while electric and nylon-string guitars are deployed with adventurously experimental, dextrous, semi-improvisational technique and texture. It also builds on Chenaux's long history of sonic experimentation with analog signal capture through natural oscillation and wave distortion, site-specificity and environmental sound. Working closely with his longtime recording engineer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, Chenaux brings this experience to bear on the production side of Skullsplitter as well, with the use of physically swinging speakers and radical gating and panning to tease out further fluctuations in the barometer of the guitar sound. The result is a gem of an album in Chenaux's increasingly luminous discography.

Guitar & Voice

With this fourth album for the label, simply and aptly titled Guitar & Voice, Chenaux has made what in a literal sense can be called his first solo album, in that the recording features only his playing and singing; no guest or supporting musicians, minimal overdubs, and a rigorous structure that alternates back and forth between longform lyrical vocal-based songs and shorter, cacophonously harmonious bowed-guitar instrumentals. Chenaux sees the entirety of Guitar & Voice as balladry. Heartbreaking lyrics delivered in his strong but gentle lilt are set against an ever-shifting array of sounds and strategies elicited from acoustic nylon-string guitar (with the help of a small but expertly-deployed chain of wah-, freeze- and fuzz-pedals). Traditional song structure and lyrical arcs manage somehow to anchor themselves to constantly surprising, unpredictable and virtuosic contrapuntal guitar work, always playing at/with the threshold of sonic experimentation and improvisation. Chenaux's ballads sound like no other.

Warm Weather With Ryan Driver

Warm Weather With Ryan Driver blends Eric Chenaux's ornate experimentation with extended melodic structures and cradling lullabye/love song ambience in a newfound coherence and temperance. Chenaux’s use of nylon string guitar as the spine for almost every track is the most notable shift in instrumentation from its predecessor. The instrument establishes a slightly different but timbrally profound anchor for the new tunes. As the album title suggests, the record is unified by a kind of humid, languorous glue – the sort of atmosphere that Chenaux compares to “that weather where the skin and air see no difference in each other.” This sort of climatic metaphor was a touchstone for Chenaux’s approach to the arranging and recording, ably supported by Driver’s use of droning organs and synths and his delicately paced, gently jazz-inflected piano. The overall effect is often akin to an interstice of Talk Talk, John Martyn and Robert Wyatt. Chenaux produces some of the most mature, subtly sophisticated and satisfying avant-folk music we know.

Sloppy Ground

Sloppy Ground is a collection of beautifully fried love songs, highly original in compositional approach and instrumental texture, and utterly compelling in lyrical content and delivery. Chenaux has rallied some of Toronto’s finest ‘out’ players for this fine album, including Nick Fraser on drums, Ryan Driver on amplified melodica and synths, David Prentice on violin, Doug Tielli on 5-string banjo, Martin Arnold on electric tenor banjo, and Aimee Dawn Robinson on electric echo harp. Chenaux’s own guitar work has never been more thrillingly deployed in the context of (relatively) conventional songcraft.

Dull Lights

Dull Lights is an album of long winding melodies and subtle shifts and turns. It is also an album of love songs. Supported by longtime collaborators Martin Arnold and Nick Fraser, Chenaux has forged a sublime 9-song album that folded his devotion to Scottish folk and pop balladry, his mastery of ‘damaged’ guitar dynamics, and his wistful, thoughtful voice into wonderfully fluid structures shaped by a trio of seasoned improvisers. Fraser’s drums play around the beat, or paint beneath it, while Arnold and Chenaux pluck buzzing lines from guitars and banjos. From the warped guitar laden drag-waltz of “Ronnie Mary,” to the processional monophony of “White Dwarf, White Sea,” to the distorted bagpipe swath of “Worm and Gear”, to the white noise crooning of the title track – Eric Chenaux composed a delicate, intricate, inspired cycle of pared-down tunes using a highly original palette of guitar-based sounds and strategies.

JOYFULTALK Announces New Album Plurality Trip, Shares Advance Single "Monocult"

JOYFULTALK

Plurality Trip

CST133 180gLP / DL Out 24 August 2018

PREORDER HERE

Stream the first single "Monocult":

Spotify

Apple Music

The sonic landscapes conjured by JOYFULTALK reflect a curiosity; a tinkered lightfield of forward motion, a maniac’s grove. The brainchild of composer and instrument builder Jay Crocker, JOYFULTALK is without a doubt the most forward-thinking musical act to emerge from the rural outpost of Crousetown, Nova Scotia. Along with fellow Calgary transplant and multi-instrumentalist Shawn Dicey (Ox, Lab Coast), JOYFULTALK offers up instrumental compositions that flow like wordless rivers and glitching fields of electric grass, through a bric-a-brac vocabulary of handmade electronics. Their music channels a sonic regionalism influenced by the craggy treelines and babbling brooks of Lunenburg county, with gnarled jamscapes rendering natural spaces in a hazy parallel universe, navigating the astral plane by way of their rugged Maritime environs.

After a fabled career as an avant-improv regular and go-to homespun producer in Calgary throughout the early aughts, Crocker relocated to a grandiose, piecemeal residence tucked in the treeline along the Petite River in Crousetown, a blink-and-you-miss-it hamlet, with his family in 2011. Without a social outlet, economic stability, or any music community to partner with, Crocker began inventing his own musical partners (The Pink Dolphin, The Cheadle, etc.), a cast of modded synths and cobbled instruments to help realize his own stirring sense of creative unbalance. The resulting material became JOYFULTALK's acclaimed 2016 debut full-length MUUIXX, released on the essential and adventurous Drip Audio label, which has been critically lauded for its unlikely Cluster-meets-RZA micro-grooves.

Following a smattering of high praise, various Canadian and European dates alongside acts such as Micachu & The Shapes and Holy Fuck, a couple of home plumbing jobs, some gnarly car repairs, the creation of the Planetary Scoring System (Crocker’s own conceptual scoring methodology) and the construction of BIBELOT (a custom-built, gallery-ready set of sixteen ceiling-mounted music boxes), listeners have been graced with Plurality Trip, the second offering from JOYFULTALK.

Plurality Trip is an extension and refinement of the project's junkshop practices, drawing from contemporary dark trance and techno, while rooted in the outré swamps of krautrock and the refracted webs of noise and dub. Though heavier than its predecessor, the weight is never debilitating – Crocker and Dicey roam the shadows with rugged tones that reveal an expansive core. Pulled into a half-sped ghettotech mirage, woozy on new-age overdose, the listener may be lulled into a key-run reminiscent of Mahmoud Ahmed before eddying into a whirlpool of industrial jank. Heady and skitteringly kinetic, Plurality Trip unfolds like a fever dream shot through with dappled forest light and darkening skies. The result is a superbly idiosyncratic and invigorating take on avant-trance music with few comparisons. Thanks for listening.

WATCH THE TEASER FOR PLURALITY TRIP:

ACCLAIM FOR JOYFULTALK'S 2016 ALBUM MUUIXX:

"Dazzling originality" - Tiny Mix Tapes

"MUUIXX will blow your fucking mind." - Noisey

"One of Canada's most exciting musical minds." - Musicworks Magazine

JOYFULTALK SPRING & SUMMER 2018 DATES

DD/MM/YY	PLACE	VENUE
25.05.18	Toronto, ON	Double Double Land
26.05.18	London, ON	Grickle Grass
27.05.18	Montréal, QC	L'Escogriffe
02.06.18	Crescent Beach, NS	House Show
03.07.18	Amsterdam, NL	Sugarfactory
04.07.18	Hamburg, DE	Molotow
06.07.18	Kutná Hora, CZ	Creepee Teepee
07.07.18	Kutná Hora, CZ	Creepee Teepee
10.07.18	Norwich, UK	Waterfront Studio
11.07.18	Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK	Cluny
12.07.18	London, UK	Birthdays
14.07.18	Brighton, UK	The Haunt
16.07.18	Birmingham, UK	Hare and Hounds
17.07.18	Bristol, UK	Fleece

Out Now: Carla Bozulich's Quieter

Carla Bozulich

Quieter

CST132 180gLP / DL Out 11 May 2018

ORDER HERE

Today we celebrate the release of Carla Bozulich's new album Quieter, a finely curated group of songs spanning her rich variety of collaborations over the past several years. Critics are already hailing the record as one of the best of her career - which is really saying something, given the top-notch quality of her extensive back catalog - and we couldn't agree more.

"Her work carries great emotional heft and immediacy, in a way that heady experimentation often struggles with; it often seems to come from some raw rift in the heart, full of the ugliness of loss and grief and alienation... This gorgeous album, which deserves to have time spent with it in the same way all of Bozulich’s work does, will get her one step further to the center of the conversation when it comes to lifetime achievement in the experimental world." - Bandcamp, Album of the Day

"Bozulich has built her reputation by celebrating everything non-traditional for years, often to gloriously resolute and raucous effect, but on Quieter, she lets her mastery of delicate intimacy shine as she taps into an eternal, cold 2AM mood that few can." - Tiny Mix Tapes, 9/10

"Like Bozulich herself, Quieter is larger than life... This is an unforgettable, virtuoso performance." - Exclaim!, 8/10

"Four decades into her consistently overlooked career, Bozulich is at her peak. 2014’s Boy was great, but this is greater: from the blasted torch song opener "Let It Roll," via more fractured, abstract pieces like "Written In Smoke" and "Stained In Grace," to the Marc Ribot duet that closes (where Bozulich channels Julie London and Ute Lemper and you can see the curling cigarette smoke), Quieter doesn’t put a foot wrong." - NARC Magazine, 5/5

"Bozulich is as good as any Nick Cave or Tom Waits, and more than deserves to be revered as much as they are. When even her off-cuts are this good, there shouldn’t be any doubt." - Norman Records

"I am going to return to this record, repeatedly, like a kept promise. Perhaps when the shadows lengthen and the skies grey over again. It will become that record to me. I believe when the tear streaks dry and the dust settles, Quieter will go down as one of my favourite records of the year. It’s durable. It’s lasting. It’s timeless." - Bearded Magazine

ORDER QUIETER @ CST WEBSHOP

ORDER QUIETER @ BANDCAMP

Audiophile 180gram pressing in midnight ultra-black vinyl from Optimal (Germany) comes in a 350gsm jacket with artworked inner sleeve and 12"x24" poster, all printed on uncoated papers and board, with a 320kbps MP3 download card.

TRACKLIST
1. Let It Roll
2. Sha Sha
3. Glass House
4. Stained In Grace
5. Emilia
6. Written In Smoke
7. End Of The World

Release date: 11 May 2018
Running time: 38:11

Eric Chenaux shares new video for "An Abandoned Rose"

Leading up to a series of live dates throughout France, Eric Chenaux is thrilled to share the video for "An Abandoned Rose" from his new album Slowly Paradise. Filmed by longtime collaborator Eric Cazdyn at the Ballaro Street Market, a centre of migrant and refugee activism in Palermo, Italy, it relies on Cazdyn's innovative techniques – including a homemade multi-camera, rotating rig that he calls The Blindspot Machine – to capture the minute interactions of everyday life in a slow and detailed pan that's been spliced with momentary bursts of colour and glimpses into one particular migrant narrative. It's a perfect visual counterpart to "An Abandoned Rose," with its deliberate pacing that matches the tangled guitar and crooning vocals while highlighting the understated compositional beauty that Eric Chenaux has become renowned for.

Watch "An Abandoned Rose"

ERIC CHENAUX SPRING & SUMMER 2018 DATES

DD/MM/YY	PLACE	VENUE
11.05.18	Périgueux, FR	SEspace Culturel François Mitterand
12.05.18	Allemans, FR	Café L'Arsenic
13.05.18	Toulouse, FR	Le Taquin
19.05.18	Sarreguemines, FR	Le Terminus
23.05.18	Berlin, DE	Kiezsalon
02.06.18	Tarbes, FR	Celtic Pub
03.06.18	Labège, FR	Maison Salvan
30.06.18	Poitiers, FR	Le Confort Moderne, Festival Bruisme

Praise for Slowly Paradise:

"This is a remarkable record - it is wildly experimental and as comforting as a soft embrace. The way he takes from the singer-songwriter tradition and from the avant-garde somehow enables him to avoid the pitfalls of both, leaving him free to sculpt his own deeply idiosyncratic vision for songwriting. The most interesting art almost always has a sense of duality, and Slowly Paradise is no different; where it radically differs is in the lack of combat between those opposing forces. Chenaux’s love for Sade, for example, in no way contradicts or confuses his love for Derek Bailey. This all-encompassing spirit coalesces on closing track and highlight ‘Wild Moon’, where Chenaux's voice is at its most rapturous, over Driver's restrained but romantic Hammond organ lines, all interwoven with some of the most perplexing guitar workouts on the record. This album is truly his strongest yet, and this closing song is his zenith." - The Quietus, Lead Album Review

"This voice is perhaps the funnel for this unfurling of thought, where the splay of feeling is consolidated into phrases. His tone is soft, verging on a whisper, as though straddling the boundary between inner thoughts and outward articulation. Sometimes it falls silent, allowing stuttering stylophones or trembling guitars to carry the monologue forth, alternating between the poetry of language and that which spirals away from what the voice can express. I imagine Chenaux to be daydreaming in these moments, as these instrument solos – sometimes chiming like bells, sometimes melting like wax – paint pictures in the air, trying to enact the images that stream through the mind, vivid and beautiful, yet also fluid and unexplainable." - Attn:Magazine

"His sixth for Constellation favours longform songs that highlight both his sweet, unfussy pop voice and its unique relationship to his experimental guitar work, with avant electronics and billowing open spaces...The 11-minute, Robert Wyatt-ish "Wild Moon" - with its woozy keys and extreme fretwork building to a quivering peak - stands out, but sensual beauty abounds." - Uncut

Eric Chenaux
Slowly Paradise

CST131 180gLP • CD • DL

Album Info & Order Link

Drawing from Eric Chenaux's rich history in avant-folk, post-jazz, improvisation and balladry, Slowly Paradise is a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. Chenaux grapples with the relationship between improvisation and structure in unique, idiosyncratic ways, and the resulting juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice. This stunning new record, showcasing Chenaux's singular voice and guitar stylings, is being celebrated as the most assured and essential solo work from this inimitable, consummate songwriter.

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