Although I’d be prepared to actually eat my nuts should J Mascis show up for this, deep and woozy thrills are pretty much guaranteed anyway. Matt Valentine and Erika Elder have been wandering a fruity psychedelic path for many a year now, drawing fellow heads and collaborators towards their Vermont retreat, and issuing a madly prolific stream of albums, CDRs and cassette sets into the ether. They usually hit that hazy psych/country/raga/drone nail on the head with accuracy; latest album ‘Barn Nova’ is gentle, ragged and sweeeeet. Watch out for the last rays of evening sunshine falling through those Church windows man.
SWN presents MV & EE with THE GOLDEN ROAD
plus KING ALEXANDER
Wednesday 25th August
The Norwegian Church
Cardiff Bay
£5 advance only from St David’s Hall on 029 2087 8500
A post-Green Man treat for those returning from the festival and those who couldn’t make it… The Golden Road features one J Mascis on drums and guitar…
MV & EE with The Golden Road: Summer Tour
UK, August 2010
For the past decade Matt “MV” Valentine (Tower Recordings) and Erika “EE” Elder (Heroine Celestial Agriculture/The MV & EE Medicine Show) have been formulating an ancient-modern universe of sound from their base deep in the Vermont woods, via their own Child of Microtones imprint as well as prolific activity on some of the most respected boutique labels in the world. Latest album Barn Nova follows two previous killer cuts on Ecstatic Peace, Green Blues and Gettin’ Gone, honestly slipstreaming peak Neil Young-esque Americana, Grateful Dead harmonix, old time front porch vibes, and time/space defying spectral jams with the help of fellow avatars The Golden Road.
In April of this year MV & EE blazed some more golden road on the Eisenhower interstate system and trans canadian highway. They rolled on the “no floor tour” as a quartet with Mick Flower (bass/japan banjo) and John Moloney (drums) on a double headline bill with Flower/Corsano duo. Mick, of course is no stranger to the MV & EE universe, doing several UK runs together both in full on electric stomps and as a transreal “folk” trio. He was also along for the ride when Matt and Erika brought a big band to primavera a coupla years back. John Moloney is contributed masterful throne work on Gettin’ Gone as well as the “Ringside seat, nosebleed tone” bootleg. He has been working with the group for 4 years now when he needs a zen wrangle away from his group Sunburned Hand of The Man.
There are a handful of deep underground records (and tapes) in the works for later this year. There is the reissue of Liberty Rose, which came out on Child of Microtones this past winter and will be birthed on LP via arbitrary signs, the imprint run by Pete Nolan (Magik Markers/Spectre Folk). There is also a follow up to the Home Comfort LP in the works for Woodsist. In addition to those two jugs of love are LP’s for Time-Lag and for 3-Lobed Recordings, both of which have been slowly simmering at Maximum Arousal Farm over the last few years now.
And that’s not all fellow sky pilots as there will be an EIGHT cassette box on Blackest Rainbow to coincide with the tour. This is the follow up to the 12 cassette road trips compendium from last year. In the great UK cassette pack tradition this will have some drum and bass courtesy of Moloney and Flower, and it will document every show, full sets in all their glory from the above mentioned ‘no floor tour’. The sound is pristine captured loud and proud in the tapers pit and there are a few guests joining in, Doc Dunn and J Mascis with freak flags flying high. This one sure is sounding sweet in the working stage and will sound really fine in the analog medium.
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/mveebummerroad
Ecstatic Peace site: http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/mvee
