Hello world,
Just some quick artist updates:
Rivulets is featured in new zine Menagerie, an entirely word-free new magazine curated by our friend and collaborator Jake Blanchard. The zine carries a covermount CD with Rivulets' unreleased track 'Lazarus', recorded by Alan Sparhawk in Duluth, MN. Order .
Nathan will also be playing at Duluth's Homegrown Music Festival on the 28th of April. Click here for details.
Finally, interested in tracing Rivs' performance history back to its beginning? Here is the place to be.
Sylvain Chauveau has released a new album of solo piano material (one 47-minute long piece of solo piano material, to be exact) on the world reknowned Creative Sources label. Recorded by Tortoise's John McEntire in Chicago, Touching Down Lightly is (to quote Sylvain) "an attempt to place spare notes or chords in the right sonic space with depth and restraint."
Whip will be back in Europe for a series of shows in support of his new EP Make Them Sirens Sing (released by Zeal Records). Check out the dates on his myspace page here.
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19.02.09
Wow, 2009 has started slow for us. We're all very busy working on precisions for upcoming releases and digital releases of old ones. ROS01 - Whip's glorious R. Mutt's Blues EP is now sold out and will only be available through download for the time being. This is something we've been working on for a while and will hopefully be near completing soon.
We're talking with a few artists about forthcoming releases and have some incredible albums lined up for the rest of the year.
Artist news...Rivulets (aka Nathan Amundson) will be hitting these European shores again soon, following up his short set of intimate shows last November. We have no firm plans yet, but we are working on a great support slot, with one of our favourite artists (and probable future O Rosa flag-flyer).
Whip (aka Jason Merritt) is going on tour at the end of April to early May in the Benelux, Germany, France and some other places. No UK dates for the minute, but we'll sort that soon enough. A new whip ep - Make Them sirens Sing is in the works, as is a new Whip full-length.
Sylvain is, as usual, busy with enigmatic and boundary-redefining new projects that he will update us about sooner or later. Be sure to check out the new 130701/FatCat compilation Floored Memory...Fading Location, which features tracks from Sylvain's stunning Un Autre Decembre album, as well as unreleased material. A podast featuring interviews with Sylvain and the other 130701 artists will be made available soon. Check out the FatCat website here.
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13.12.08
2008 has been a feverishly busy year for everyone here at O Rosa. Our biggest releases to date, a Rivulets European tour, Sylvain Chauveau's beautiful show at the Union Chapel (backed by our friends and colleagues Greg Haines and Peter Broderick) and lots of exciting planning for next year. We'd like to thank everyone, everyone who has helped in any faculty. We have some exciting announcements regarding next year's release plans - stay tuned!
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15.4.08
We'd like to extend our warmest thanks to Prof. Grenville Hancox, head of music at Christ Church University. His help is hugely appreciated.
There is a beautiful live video of Rivulets' beautiful "You Are My Home" online here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8bscoD25o-c
The release of this record is coming up soon! Be sure to get pre-orders in early!
We have some great new reviews of Roman Anglais by Felicia Atkinson & Sylvain Chauveau, which can be read on our myspace site.
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03.3.08
Welcome to the new O Rosa Records site! A thousand thanks to Alex Harbin for all his help.
To accompany this good news, here's some more good news:
The gorgeous You Are My Home by Rivulets is heading towards the manufacturers as I type. We have some minor artwork changes to make, and then we're ready to go. Expect a May release of this beautiful record (and have a quick listen here).
Just as good: ROS02, the debut collaborative effort from
Felicia Atkinson and Sylvain Chauveau is to be released worldwide on
the 10th of March 2008. Pre-orders from the site, though, will be
exclusively available from around the beginning of February.
Are you happy? We're happy.
O Rosa Records is a new label owned and run by James Vella of yndi halda.
Our ethos is to present special music; works of art that could have been released anywhere in the world at any time in human history; music that sings intimately to you and I. We are not a business, we are a creative endeavour.
The releases will be packaged and designed with the dedication that the music deserves. We will not release our own music. We are very interested in non-western, interesting folk music with lovely vocal harmonies and nice use of orchestral instruments, but not as a rule.
The name comes from Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (one of James' favourite novels): "O Rosa! O departed youth! O Goethe! O Mozart!"
Whip
website | myspace
Portland's Jason Merritt writes songs for both himself (as Whip), and for his band (Timesbold). while all are rich and melancholy Americana, the former are much softer and more delicate than the full-band arrangements, and fit the O Rosa sound perfectly.
Jason spent his youth in upstate New York, but eventually found his way to that great centre-point of outsider culture - Portland, Oregon. He was eager to escape New York by any means necessary, and around the year 2000, he found that making records brought him out of the little town he was living in and so the musical adventures of Timesbold and Whip began to take him around the world, and further from home with every new endeavour.
Felicia Atkinson & Sylvain Chauveau
website | myspace
We welcome the first European artists to our little label. The melifluous sonic interweaving of autumnal, shimmering guitar, prepared piano, subtle electronics and the most musical use of pure silence in modern times with Felicia's barely-whispered narratives inspired us to welcome them with open arms! Sylvain has released with the world-respected Type and Fat Cat labels (his most recent EP S is available from Type as of October 2007), has toured with Sigur Ros and played with Christian Fennesz, and is one of Paris' most prominent currently-operating modern composers. Felicia is an artist, and a songwriter in her own right, as well as writing poetry (as evidenced here), and has a discography no less note-worthy than Sylvain's.
Rivulets
website | myspace
Nathan Amundson began writing songs as Rivulets in 1999, after leaving home as a 16-year old and traveling almost non-stop across the United States.
Rivulets has previously released records with Important Records, Acuarela, BlueSanct, Silber, and (perhaps most thrillingly) Chair Kickers' Union (the label owned by Low. Alan Sparhawk of that band also recorded the first two Rivulets full-lengths, and Mimi Parker performs on them).
Having shared a stage with - among others - Cerberus Shoal, Coco Rosie, Mark Eitzel, Daniel Johnston, Low, Mirah, My Morning Jacket, Scout Niblett, Piano Magic, Stars of the Lid, Songs: Ohia, Swearing at Motorists, Willard Grant Conspiracy, and Xiu Xiu, Rivulets is a well-known as a blistering live act, and will be gracing Europe with songs from You Are My Home in 2008.
More artists to come (possibly even one from Denmark)...
Sweet, hushed tones and delicately cracking vocals with plaintive and genuinely stirring lyrics. R. Mutt's Blues is the record that saw Jason slowly return from almost dead; after an entire year of phonographic inactivity, the first months of 2007 will see Whip release this stunning EP and accompanying full length, as well as some (no doubt wonderful) live performances on this side of that great Atlantic. The title refers to Marcel Duchamp's oft-misunderstood Dadaist masterpiece 'Fountain', and is a knowing and cheerful allegory to something we may never understand. These songs will melt hearts.
1 - Beast of Each [mp3]
2 - How Can I Turn
3 - Swim for Sure
4 - Great Wall of China
5 - Wrecking Crew
Order:
Order the R. Mutt's Blues EP from here
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ROS02 - Felicia Atkinson & Sylvain Chauveau | Roman Anglais - 10th of March 2008:
Felicia and Sylvain's debut collaborative effort is quite noticeably the work of two of the field's most noteworthy songwriters. From Dans La Lumiere's gentle electronic flickering that brings to mind Labradford or Stars of the Lid, to the gorgeous (and unexpected) English vocals of Aberdeen - "down by the river, I shot down my baby" - this record is one that no-one will fail to be stirred by. Like a serene, slow-motion window into the world of Paris' lively architecture, or a glimpse into where silence meets sound at their closest point. You will not forget this record.
Le premier album de Felicia avec Sylvain est une collaboration l'on peut clairement percevoir le styles respectifs des deux personnages. De l'electronique scintillante et lre de Dans La Lumiere, vision de delicatesse et de grace dans leurs formes les plus pures, a la surprenante voix anglophone de Aberdeen - « I shot down my baby, down by the river » une musique qui en remuera plus d'un. Comme un alenti depuis une fenetre parisienne, ou la rencontre rencontre intime entre le son et le silence. Vous n'oublierez pas cet enregistement.
1 - Aberdeen [mp3]
2 - How The Light
3 - Dans La Lumiére
4 - Roman Anglais
Order:
Order Roman Anglais from here
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ROS03 - Rivulets | You Are My Home - 5th of May 2008:
We have, in You Are My Home, a wintry, longing and grippingly beautiful record. Moments of warmth are carried - resonate, even - through passages of great yearning. The heartbreakingly lingering finger-picked guitar; warm, full orchestral arrangements and enveloping, delicate vocal deliveries that make up You Are My Home are to be treasured, held close like sunlight in Alaska.
This is a record that stands so complete and so singularly in the field; there is enough sentiment here to fill a whole back catalogue of recordings, and O Rosa Records is proud to present this truly breathtaking release.
1 - Glass Houses
2 - Can't I Wonder
3 - You Are My Home [mp3]
4 - Heartless
5 - Motioning
6 - Greenhouse
7 - Win or Lose
8 - To Be Home
9 - You Sail On
10 - Happy Ending
11 - Morning Light
Order:
Order You Are My Home from here
Hetfield: James Vella
Ulrich: Oliver Newton
Hammett: John Lynch
Trujillo.: Andreas Geiser
For getting in touch:
Press: Paul at Plug Two
UK and Europe distribution: Greg at Baked Goods
Scandinavia distribution: Anders at DotShop
USA distribution: Jimmy at Forced Exposure
Japan distribution: Masami at P*Dis
Other inquiries (including demo submission): James at O Rosa
Links:
O Rosa Records on myspace
O Rosa Records webstore
yndi halda (James' band)
A Lily (James' solo project)
Baked Goods (UK and Europe distribution)
DotShop (Scandinavia distribution)
Forced Exposure (USA distribution)
P*Dis (Japan distribution)
PlugTwo (Press)
Burnt Toast Vinyl (our friends)
Fat Cat Records (James' employers)