SC Distributon

In anticipation of the May 9th release of the mammoth new Danielson full-length entitled Ships, Sounds Familyreis proud to present one of three unique, limited edition 7" singles: "Dry Goods Dry Power" b/w "Left-Handed Smoke Shifter". Recorded at Electrical Audio Studios by Steve Albini, "Dry Goods?" finds Daniel Smith with his friends Edith Frost and Darin Gray (Grand Ulena/ Brice Glace / Dazzling Killmen) playing and singing along to rhythms created by Daniel's Heartbeat and someone knocking on a door. Two additional 7'' singles will be released simultaneously on Anticonwith a song performed and produced by Why? and an album track remix by J. ChristiaanPalladino, and Kill Rock Stars (with two songs produced by Kramer).

"For more than 30 years, pop music has suffered from a God complex--attaching a scarlet letter to artists who include the religious experience in their songs.

But a new generation of musicians from across the spiritual spectrum is emerging, discarding the trappings of the Christian-culture industry to reintroduce the transcendence, beauty and historical gravity of western scared music to the places where it belongs: dinner parties, road trips and back porches.

Come O Spirit brings together artists like Dave Bazan, Damien Jurado, Rosie Thomas, Dennison Witmer, The Welcome Wagon (featuring Sufjan Stevens) and Leigh Nash to revive 400 years of long-forgotten melodies and liturgical music. The brainchild of producers Isaac Wardell and Mason Neely, Come O Spirit interprets hymnody through lush, cinematic arrangements and a drop of Southern gothic mystique. It's like a prayer.

Released Sept. 8, together with the Smith family and Great Comfort Records."

Glen Galaxy's version of the story:"So we figured that if we could fly out for a couple days and book a couple of shows at the end to cover the flights, we could get an EP together. It worked. The line-up was a four-piece, plus Daniel (danielson famile) engi-producing and stepping in for instrumental cameos. I (Glen) played guitars, keys, and sang. The songs were decidedly organically based and away from the hip-hop and drum&bass elements of recent Soul-Junk long-players. Jon Galaxy played bass and also contributed blurts and spritzes from a self-programmed drum-noise generator of his. Sufjan Stevens was the drummer, also doing a few organ & bell parts and singing along in large male choir arrangements. Slo-ro was the wild card, weighing in with clarinet and banjo and electric bubble touches..."Daniel Smith's version of the story:"Glen Galaxy came with 20 guitar parts on a tape. Everyone was at their station around the New Jerusalem Recreation Room (my parents basement). The stations were separated by mattresses and ping-pong tables. The assembling began and it was flawless. My friends Glen Galaxy, Jon Galaxy, Slo-Ro and this new character Sufjan Stevens ploughed through many unknown territories...all I could do is clap along. We would work and then come up for air and then the whip was cracked and back to work. Day three and the deadline was near. Glenn still had to write and record his vocals. The trooper (that he is) stayed up all night writing words and parts and the next morning's "let's do it" completed this project just in time. Lenny Smith and Micah Ortega joined in the men's choir and Chris Palladino put on a synth part. I took these tracks and mixed them up and bounced them off of Glen. 1942 was born."

Originally self-released on vinyl in 1994Re-released by Soundsfamilyre in 2001

By sheer force of flim-flam genius slight-of-hand, this outing finds Soul-Junk following up the critically acclaimed 1957 with a release that manages to be simultaneously more deconstructed and yet more accessible. This is the crossroads that Soul-Junk delights, dancing across the pavements and avoiding bus rides into the played out regions of the current electronic/hip-hop landscape. But rather they cannonball into pools and puddles unafraid of no diving rules and whistle blowing purists.

With a MUCH wider instrumentation / influence / and an amazing love of noise, Soul-Junk returns after cooking another potluck sized serving of hip-hop, sliced/diced/smothered and covered. From Gamelon influenced choral dizzy-clash, calypso-noise-fusion, baroque chamber music cut-ups, atari glitch funk, and campfire sing-a-longs, the album arrives with a juiced up sample palette and ground breaking production. Disturbing crookedness and collaborations with Kidnastypup, free-jazzer Daniel Carter and avant-trumpeter Greg Kelley, DJ Mizzicah, Bizzart and the ever elusive Prof. Kermit (aka Golden Poultry Error).

"It's only fitting that for Soul-Junk's auspicious 1960 release, the stylistically dizzying San Diego-based band has returned to the comfy confines of Sounds Familyre, home of their musically adventurous cross-continental kinfolk Danielson. Recorded at Danielson's New Jerusalem Recreation Room studio in South Jersey and co-produced by Glen Galloway and Daniel C. Smith, 1960 is S-J's eleventh album.

Although repeatedly, massively, fervently rocking out more often than any Soul-Junk record in years, 1960's crystalline/inventively fuzzified electric guitars and pounding drums (courtesy of recurrent S-J stalwart Brian Cantrell, a Galaxy associate since 1980s high school days in SD) tell only part of the sound-story. Having enlisted over a dozen S-J members through the years, vocalist-guitarist Galaxy is joined by eight others here for a suitably large-scale Soul-Junk ensemble.

Completing the core power-trio, there is thunderous bass from the moonlighting Emil Nikolaisen, guitar-playing front man for Norway's Serena Maneesh. There is spirited keyboard from Portland, OR's soulful Todd Fadel. There is ample cello from Jie Jin, a prized classical player active throughout the Delaware Valley and beyond. There is marimba and additional guitar from Joshua Stamper, a Danielson member whose overall charting/arranging skills were tellingly engaged.

And there are those voices -- family voices. Danielson Famile ringleader Daniel Smith (whose sister is married to Galaxy's brother) is joined by his wife Elin Smith and father Lenny Smith in singing out/harmonizing along. And contributing some colorful album artwork, there is Glen's son Jude, who joins his dad on stage these days as an estimable teen trapsman.

The Word, sound, vision -- family: Soul-Junk's 1960." David R. Stampone

"All This Could Kill You" is a fiercely beautiful and mysterious collaboration between husband and wife Ben + Vesper and their cast of siblings, grade school friends, brand new friends and friendly strangers. Produced and recorded by Daniel Smith (Danielson), this 13 song album smartly navigates through wildly disparate genres and styles and lands squarely in the ranks of good music that you simply cannot be without. If Ben + Vesper must be classified, one could parse it as such: 1/3 English Country Lane, 1/3 Croonsville, 1/16th Motown, 1/32 Brazilian Psychodelialand, 1/32 Dark Mythic Forest. All comparisons aside, this is music that innocently holds hands with innovation and accessibility. The great strength of this album is the mystical connection that is instantly apparent between the couple at the helm. The low hum resonance of Ben's voice floats and falls through one gorgeous melody after another, while Vesper effortlessly breathes every harmony like a shining maiden from the nether world. One gets the feeling that Ben + Vesper are singing to you alone, reciting the forgotten letters of an old friend written in a common language that lay dormant far too long.  Every song offers instrumentation that is wonderfully diverse and concise derived from a team of formidable players, some well known, and some who are bound to be. Sufjan Stevens quietly sits on the floor with his banjo, woodwinds, vocals and piano while drummer David Smith punches each song into its full dance floor potential. Daniel and his wife Elin sing and whistle and snap and knit. But the manic men behind the curtain are Ben's older brother Josh and Ben's lifelong friend Chris Weisman. Together, they worked tirelessly to forge the backdrop of sound that has you edging ever closer to your speakers. Their arrangements are fine tuned in their complexities, yet breathe the air of improvisation that reference the hardship and playfulness of life while flatly condemning the cold claws of irony that have gripped so much independent music today.  "All This Could Kill You" is an album that is 100% human and still winsome to the masses. This recording achieves what all timeless music does: to look squarely at the sufferings of this life and hold out hope like a weapon for all to wield, and to have fun all the while.

The whole represents a new and welcome chapter in the Danielson oeuvre--a startlingly effective new band, a new thematic field (the locally-grown opus), produced with more sonic ambition than any recent Danielson effort, but without sacrificing the brave interior journey that we have come to expect from Daniel Christopher Smith: the world is complex, slightly dangerous, full of temptations, but there is still grace, beauty, meaning, and the music that is required to suggest all this is anything but easy, but that doesn't mean it is not rewarding, beautiful, funny, sad, and generous.

More recently, Wovenhand whipped up Blush , a CD already available in Europe that compiles music Edwards wrote for Ultima Vez, a Belgian dance company. The offering will eventually make its way to the States.Reprinted from Westword Music Showcase

As in the two previous Wovenhand releases, we find David Eugene Edwards stripped down from the more aggressive full-band sound of 16 Horsepower--banjo, piano and upright bass are featured more than guitar. Edwards and company carve out a subtle atmosphere of dreamy folklore-inspired landscapes and channel tribal vibes of raw and spontaneous emotion.

"Woven Hand's eponymous debut is one of the best records you're going to hear this year"-d.i.w. (Devil In The Woods Magazine)"[an Album of]rough beauty?"- NO DEPRESSION

"songwriter of apocalyptic intensity" ?UNCUT MAGAZINE

"Compelling, tuneful"- MAGNET MAGAZINE

"Woven Hand is a well-crafted and valuable view into Edwards' uniquely apocalyptic vision."-PASTE MAGAZINE "I hate to gush, but gush I must. This is my (Andee's) RECORD OF THE YEAR. Done deal. It doesn't matter what happens for the rest of the year. Kurt Kobain could come back from the grave and record a new Nirvana record. Laddio Bollocko could get back together. Earth reunion. It doesn't matter.This is it. THE ONE. It's magical, dark, mysterious, sinister, gorgeous and moves me like very few records do."- Aquarius Records

"COSMIC PATRIOT is a timeless pop balancing act between a stormy middle-earth apocalypse and something effortless, intimate, and unhurried. The writing, the band, the recording ? there's complexity, darkness, and intensity, but it's all so snug and woven and of-a-piece. It's amazing how disarming a song that starts off with the battle cry, "Prepare for war, total war..." ends up being. Just as the listener finishes taking in the meaning of that chilling lyric, the song glides into a rousing homefires sing-along. Therein is the push-me-pull-me quality that exists throughout. Take "Everyday In My Heart," which could easily be Johnny Cash covering the Cascades "Listen To The Rhythm Of The Falling Rain." The clouds form and part, the raindrops and sunshine are interchangeable, and you couldn't get the tune out of your head if you wanted..." -Glen Galloway, 2009

When the Pope visits America, musician Lenny Smith always gets a call from the diocese, asking permission to blast Smith's famous worship song, "Our God Reigns," from the Popemobile. This internationally beloved song, which represents the height of Smith's fame, (and the song he cannot escape from), also appears on "Deep Calls to Deep," Smith's latest release on Soundsfamilyre, the label of his son, Daniel Smith, of the renegade Danielson Famile. It appears on the new album alongside 15 more melodies that run the gamut from Folk Mass-like music to ballads that work the bones, to beautiful rock 'n roll with vintage organ and a Kinks-like peculiarity. At 58, Lenny Smith is a dangerous romantic more committed than ever to dangerously real music. Don't expect the old gem to be polished up with a brass quartet or a feverish violin; Smith has left it pretty much alone, he and the guitar, quite unadorned and happily situated next to newer, just as appealing material. The title track, "Deep Calls to Deep," is taken from the Psalms, and throughout the album the listener acquires carefully crafted melodies and licks. All are strange and loveable, like a favorite sock, or a favorite set of marbles. Gulp the whole album down or pull out a singular element, like a string of taffy, or a beautiful new cat's eye; enjoy it in all types of sunlight, at all times of the day. The music of Lenny Smith is peculiar yet familiar, name same as the label where it lives - it saves the revolution for the Holy Spirit, which holds its writer in full sway. This stuff is a doorway into the holy city, a way to celebrate awakenings, broken chains, a turning to the heart of the matter.This is rock 'n roll.- Melissa Herwaldt