Pressed at Quality Record Pressings!
Loren Connors has improvised and composed original guitar music for over four decades. His music embraces the aesthetics of blues, Irish airs, blues-based rock and other genres while letting go of rigid forms.
In July 1979, Cadence Magazine noted that Connors, who had recently emerged in the scene, was similar to others in the Advanced Guard of improvising guitarists in that he is trying to extend the boundaries of sound and pitch of acoustic guitar, but he is unique in the utilization of Blues in his work, one could almost say this is Avant Garde Blues. Hes swimming in new waters and beginning to make his own environment.
Blues: The Dark Paintings of Mark Rothko is one of Loren Connors most cherished and sought after albums. Originally released in a hand-made edition of around 300 copies on Connors own St. Joan label in January 1990 under the name Guitar Roberts -- this album has been unavailable in any form until now.
At the time of its release, Connors was still an inscrutable guitarist whose matchless and alien rendering of the blues was just gaining recognition despite more than two dozen solo and collaborative releases since 1978. Connors classic, song-based In Pittsburgh had only been available for three months when Blues welcomed the new decade. It would be the first of four solo albums issued by Connors that year and distilled the blues form into bleak, minimalist lines and tone; a compound of influences spanning Louisiana guitarist Robert Pete Johnson to painter Mark Rothko.
"Moving with the slow, stately weirdom we expect of Connors' late '80s sound, the music is all shards, all pokes in the eye, as though Rothko's gray scale had exploded, sending shrapnelized paint rocketing through your brain," music historian Byron Coley writes in the liner notes of this reissue. "Just as Connors' notes ricochet hauntedly through its recesses."
For this reissue, the audio has been restored to Connors specifications of how these seven instrumentals were originally intended to sound. Cover art is an untitled 1969 Rothko work -- one of the paintings that influenced Connors to record this album. The original LP art and liner notes are replicated as a full-color inner sleeve. New liner notes by Coley chart Connors' development and Rothkos effect on the music.
Pressed on pristine 150 gram vinyl by Quality Record Pressings in an edition of 800. LP includes a coupon for a full download.
Features:
150g Vinyl LP
Limited Edition - only 800 copies!
Pressed at Quality Record Pressings
Audio restored to Connors' original vision by Taylor Deupree (12K)
Cover art is 1969 Rothko "dark painting"
Full-color inner sleeve with replicated original LP art and liner notes
New liner notes by music historian Byron Coley
Includes limited time full album download card
Selections:
Side A:
1. Blues no. 1
2. Blues no. 2
3. Blues no. 3
4. Blues no. 4
Side B:
5. Blues no. 5
6. Blues no. 6
7. Blues no. 7
