MIKE BARRETT & TOM CREAN
CASUAL LUDDITES
CDR album, KSE #320, released 12 October 2015
Mike Barrett: Electronics
Tom Crean: Guitar and Banjo
ALL RELEASES ARE $8 each postpaid in the USA and $12.00 each postpaid elsewhere.
Send funds via paypal to django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com
Please include a note with your paypal order listing what items you are ordering and your name/mailing address
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Nice to welcome back two of Western Massachusetts’s finest, TOM CREAN and MIKE BARRETT, for a new duo album which pairs Tom’s unclassifiable guitar and banjo work with Mike’s electronics. Tom appeared on KSE two years ago with WIRED LOVE (KSE #260), one of our best-received albums, and an album which STILL gets positive comments when I meet people who are familiar with the label (“You put out those KSE albums? That Tom Crean album was great….when’s he going to do another one?”). I first became familiar with Tom through his association with Anthony Braxton, and Tom represents the same kind of combination of extreme discipline and absolute freedom (and mixing/overlaying of genres) as his former teacher, along with the dry humor and the logical programmatic approach. Tom can play in any format, and he can do everything from street busking to participating in contemporary avant-garde ensembles. I asked Tom to do two new duo albums in 2015-2016, and this one is the first (stay tuned in mid-2016 for the next).
Mike Barrett is well-known and widely respected for his work under the BELLTONESUICIDE moniker, and we’ve issued two of his albums previously, one solo and one paired with Mike Griffin (aka Parashi). Mike is also a visual artist (Mike and I are going to be doing an art-and-poetry chapbook in the next year too), and he brings that painterly approach to his slash-and-burn electronic improvisations. However, Mike can also be a sensitive player, as we see in these duos with Tom Crean.
On some level, this album is an extension of the tradition of the 70s albums by Anthony Braxton and Richard Teitelbaum and by Marion Brown and Elliott Schwartz, where a free-thinking musician on a traditional instrument performs duets with an electronic musician (our two GIFT FIG albums where Alfred 23 Harth has been paired with Carl Stone are also recent work in that same tradition). It’s an exciting pairing, and with Tom having such a wide variety of techniques he brings to the table, both on guitar and banjo, and with Mike being an absolute master of the analog synth and able to use it with the creativity and precision that a John Fahey or a Steve Lacy brought to traditional instruments, these duets are a pleasure to experience. There is a Southeast Asian feel to the material, as a number of the pieces were influenced by the film Apocalypse Now, and the album also captures the tensions and explosiveness and pre-and-post-battle calm of that war….the beauty and the pain of the place and the time.
CASUAL LUDDITES is an album that gets richer with each listen. Tom and Mike have played together extensively and did a previous duo album for Gilded Throne (see below), but this one will reach a wider audience and for me has deeper roots. Don’t miss CASUAL LUDDITES, and if you live in Western MA or east of the Hudson in NY state, keep your ears and eyes open for announcement of a Tom and Mike duo album-release concert later in 2015 or in early 2016.
We still have copies of the extended reissue of the BELLTONESUICIDE “Non-Conformist Sessions” album, and as stated above, Tom will be back next year with another duo album, which we’ll keep a surprise for the present time. AND….Mike Barrett will be back with an all-new Belltone album for KSE in December of this year, WAVE TABLE EROTICA (KSE #327).
Get your copy NOW….
PS, Tom Crean recently issued a fascinating book, TOM CREAN’S GUITAR JOURNAL, documenting ten years of work in a unique creative format that’s part poetic daybook, part conceptual programmatic text. You can check it out and order it here: … http://www.lulu.com/shop/tom-crean/tom-creans-guitar-journal/paperback/product-22106668.html
visit TOM CREAN at http://tomcreanguitarjournal.com/
hear more from MIKE BARRETT at http://belltonesuicide.bandcamp.com/ and https://soundcloud.com/belltonesuicide
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Their previous duo album for Gilded Throne
and while ordering CASUAL LUDDITES, why not pick up some of our other recent releases of potent experimental music on CDR albums…..all hand-assembled and homemade editions of between 48 and 125….and when they are gone, they are gone….
KSE #318, ALFRED 23 HARTH & JOHN BELL, “CAMELLIA”
KSE #316, MASSIMO MAGEE & DAVID W. STOCKARD, “INTERROGATORIES”
KSE #310, MORE EAZE (aka Marcus M. Rubio), “ACCIDENTAL PRIZES”
KSE #314, BELLTONE SUICIDE (Mike Barrett), “THE COMPLETE NON-CONFORMIST SESSIONS”
KSE #294, FOSSILS WITH BRIAN RURYK
KSE #305, RAMBUTAN, “Remember Me Now”
KSE #299, LISA CAMERON & ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Sol Et Terra”
KSE #296, THE GARMENT DISTRICT (featuring Jennifer Baron), “Luminous Toxin”
KSE #298, GIFT FIG: ALFRED 23 HARTH and CARL STONE, “Stellenbosch,” live in South Africa, September 2014
KSE #275, ALFRED 23 HARTH, “China Collection”
ALL RELEASES ARE $8 each postpaid in the USA and $12.00 each postpaid elsewhere.
Send funds via paypal to django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com.
Please include a note with your paypal order listing what items you are ordering and your name/mailing address.
As always, thank you for your support of Kendra Steiner Editions and all independent, non-aligned arts organizations who operate under the radar of the established “underground”/”alternative” channels….
Kendra Steiner Editions (Bill Shute) 
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