Detroit-based acoustic guitarist Nick Schillace is in an Afrobeat big band and a post-rock duo. He composes, improvises and backs up singers in string and traditional ensembles. But he’s not a band guy. Sure, he did what you probably did in high school, answering friends’ calls for help with their projects and building his reputation as an electric guitar player. Nick kept it up through five years of journalism study, or long enough to realize that he really didn’t want his fate as a musician to rest on somebody else’s whim. He quit his bands, enrolled in music school, and began pouring every idea into six strings wound to wood.

Nick was well prepared, as his parents—early members of the Detroit Blues Society and musicians themselves—had toted him to folk music workshops throughout the South during his childhood. There, he met and studied with still-living purveyors of traditional music. In college, he looked back at that past through the first generation of steel-string composers. Nick dug into their releases, transcribing and studying the disparate styles but eventually arriving at an ultimate axiom: Musicians of the highest order explored their own tastes and idiosyncrasies as players, listeners and people to create highly individual music. That lesson was reinforced by a comprehensive graduate thesis focusing on 20th-century American musical identity and a process for analyzing musicians in a neutral and comprehensive way. Nick got to work, applying his findings to his own music and releasing Box Canyon, his debut for acoustic guitar, in 2005.

But Landscape and People—his second album and first for Burly Time Records—is the real arrival: Like the journalist he almost became, Nick’s memories narrate these tunes as his fingers spin the projector. “1976”—the year of his wife’s birth—moves with what he calls her bright, optimistic outlook, and “Your Memories of Oklahoma”—Nick’s first 12-string number—relates nostalgia for a piece of land in Oklahoma owned by a friend’s family. Through it all, Nick never sounds like he’s reciting or showcasing. Rather, he sounds fresh and untouched, carefully composing stories that read themselves to you with smiles, winks and nods.

This is Landscape and People. With all due respect to our favorite pickers, we think it will become your next reference point.

Download MP3:

1976

Your Memories of Oklahoma

Press Photo:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/images/NSpressHIGH.jpg (2mb)

LANDSCAPE AND PEOPLE One Sheet:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/schillace_onesheet.pdf (200kb)

Thanks to everyone who is listening to and talking about “Birds” from Collections of Colonies of Bees. Here are some selected quotes from those talking about the album:

“a flight of airy resonances and Reichian flutters … a gorgeous … unfurling, that rolls up and down into a few anti-climaxes until its final triumphant climb

-Brandon Stosuy, Stereogum (01.14.08)

“They don’t need vocals or traditional song structures to make interesting, engaging and energetic music.

-Muzzle of Bees (01.12.08)

“The music, as grandiose and expansive as any take on indie’s vast pallate, is … another solid album in a long line of bands making pop feel epic once more.

-Electronic Voice Phenomenon (01.15.08)

“the first perfect sound of 2008.

-Collective Common (01.18.08)

“Evidence if it were needed of the power of music.

-Mp3 Hugger (01.16.08)

“majestic passages appear as if they were lifted from clouds, with guitars that swarm and proclamate, build, and explode monstrous holes in the dark with their light.

-Parasites & Sycophants (01.18.08)

Hello, and thanks for visiting the Slowpitch PR website. We are an independent firm, currently managing the press and public relations exclusively for Table of the Elements and Table of the Elements / Radium artists. We look forward to introducing you to the forward thinking, exciting artists and bands that you need to know about, and keeping you informed of their activities.

If you can’t find the materials you are looking for on the site, or if you’d like to set up an interview or request titles, please feel free to email us at:
slowpitchpr@gmail.com

Thank you, Talk to you soon.

Saturday, January 19th
Mad Planet, Milwaukee WI

w/ Bon Iver

The Bees’ latest show is with their good friend Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), and should not be missed. The Bees look forward to seeing Justin, as the last time they played together it was during a tour with Deyarmond Edison, the band Vernon fronted along with Megafaun members Joe Westerlund, Brad and Phil Cook.

Bio:
Jon Mueller has been an active drummer and percussionist since the mid-80s. Whether utilizing bombastic minimalism, dense interplay, or electroacoustic practices, his approach focuses on a physical dialog between situation and material. He has been featured on numerous recordings and has performed throughout the U.S., Japan, and Europe.

He has performed/recorded with: Aranos, Keith Berry, Jarboe, Jason Kahn, Asmus Tietchens, Jack Wright, Carol Genetti, Collections of Colonies of Bees, Pele, Hal Rammel, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jim Schoenecker, Bhob Rainey, Martijn Tellinga, Glenn Kotche, Werner Moebius, Steve Nelson-Raney, Lionel Marchetti, Tatsuya Nakatani, Adam Sonderberg, Thomas Gaudynski, Tim Catlin, Rhys Chatham, Matt Turner, Achim Wollscheid, Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Lightbox Orchestra, and many others.

In 1998, he started Crouton, an organization involved in releasing sound and material in limited editions, hosting an online magazine, distributing other labels releases, and hosting performance events. Releases have included Lionel Marchetti, Asmus Tietchens, The Hafler Trio, Jason Kahn, Richard Chartier, Achim Wollscheid, and many others. Hosted performances have included Phill Niblock, Peter Brotzmann, Olivia Block, Ken Vandermark, Konk Pack, and more.

Download MP3:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/audio/02Homeostatic.mp3

Press Photo:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/church-music.jpg (2mb)

METALS One Sheet:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/toe-cd-108_1sheet_slowpitch.pdf (600kb)

Press:
“Mueller’s minimalist percussion raises hypnotic palettes of solid color. He merges the human touch with the objects that he vibrates, pops, scrapes, or taps.” – Mark Corroto, All About Jazz

“Mueller goes straight to the core of drums’ pneumonic organism, avoiding easy edulcoration to privilege spacing systems and sustained transmutations, where snare drums become turbocharged in an itinerant mass of resonant charms and the deep rumble of a sapiently treated (?) bass drum (???) skin transforms itself into a hoarse monster of droning majesty reigning in deafening volume.” – Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

“Mueller has found a way to go beyond his free jazz past and take the world of instrumental virtuosity into the 21st century.” – Dan Warburton, Paristransatlantic.com

Booking Contact: info@jonmueller.net

Megafaun has a thing for extremes: In August 2005, the trio and four of its best friends left the wintry climes of Eau Claire, Wis., arriving in Raleigh, N.C. in the middle of the hottest summer on record. Brothers Brad and Phil Cook and best friend since high school, Joe Westerlund, played with Justin Vernon in the quartet DeYarmond Edison for a year down South. In August 2006, the band—in the middle of recording an EP and challenging itself on every artistic level—called it quits. Vernon left for Wisconsin to record alone, but the Cooks and Westerlund stayed put. Megafaun played its first show a month later. Before 2007 was a month old, they were in their own studio, recording Bury the Square, the record that should be in your headphones.

But this story is not so simple. After finishing the album and selling it in hand-stamped vinyl cases cut and sewn on kitchen tables, Megafaun got two phone calls: Akron/Family—the New England trio Megafaun had long respected for its ability to invert divergent idioms into ecstatic hybrids—asked if the trio would be available to tour for six weeks. Megafaun would open each show, then join Akron/Family and experimental electronicist Greg Davis for a seven-member spree. And on their way to those first Pennsylvania practices with Akron and Davis, Table of the Elements founder Jeff Hunt—who’d released some of the band’s favorite records of the last two decades, from Tony Conrad and John Fahey to Jim O’Rourke and John Cale—called. In a breathless conversation, he offered the band a spot on his new Radium imprint. Puzzled and pleased, Megafaun agreed and rode on.

This is it, Bury the Square, and it embraces the same knack for extremes and the unexpected as Megafaun’s backstory: You can hear the salty brine of the North Carolina sea in their rustic porch-stomps on “His Robe.” You can hear the rush of native Northern winds through the bitter breaking of expectations on “Where We Belong.” You can, once again, hear the joy of something none of us ever expected.



Download MP3:

http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/audio/06LazySuicide.mp3

Press Photo:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/images/MegafaunHIGH.jpg (2mb)

Bury the Square One Sheet:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/faun_1sheet.pdf (1mb)

Press:
“It’s an album so ingeniously balanced that it stands a chance of satisfying both folk and experimental music fans.”

—Brian Howe, The Independent Weekly

“An album … of free-jazz wanderlust, gooey ambient and low(-fi) country gospel.”
—Robbie Mackey, Paper Thin Walls

“Megafaun succeeds on all accounts.”
—The Perm & the Skullet

Booking Contact:
megafaun@gmail.com

Bio:
In 1998 Chris Rosenau and Jon Mueller formed Collections of Colonies of Bees as an outlet to explore traditional folk/bluegrass instrumentation combined with modern process and technology. The subsequent self-titled document was released on the UK label The Rosewood Union, and was the first in a string of evolving, exploratory works; each very different, but all with the unifying thread of Rosenau’s intricate guitar lines. This string included Rance, the surreal electronics of fa.ce (a, and the stunning vocal and pedal steel centered Meyou. In 2003 the group began it’s steady procurement of members, enlisting Jon Minor to contribute to the dense blow out ep Stuck. The following year, the group signed to Polyvinyl Records, who were interested in what Chris and Jon had been up to since their work in the group Pele. Adding a fourth member, Jim Schoenecker, they gave the label 2/3 of the recordings of Customer, which was, according to the label, “the most ambitious project they had undertaken.” Spanning two continents and 3 formats, this release was an absolute mind-melter of electronic and acoustic odd rock. In 2006 the Bees reconstituted itself as a powerhouse live group, adding Thomas Wincek and Daniel Spack to help articulate a dynamic attack of sonic maximalism. Now, they’re preparing their next release for Table of the Elements Records based on their bombastic live sound where Rhys Chatham and Arnold Dreyblatt meet pop. Where did the folk/bluegrass go? It’s still there. You just can’t hear it anymore…

Download MP3:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/audio/03FlocksIII.mp3

Press Photo:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/beespresshigh.jpg (2mb)

BIRDS One Sheet:
http://slowpitchpr.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/toe-cd-810_1sheet_slowpitch.pdf (600kb)

Members:
Jon Mueller: drums, percussion
Lineage: Pele/Mouths/Jason Kahn/Nom Tom/Asmus Tietchens/Bhob Rainey/Rhys Chatham

Chris Rosenau: guitar
Lineage: Pele/Vermont/Rhys Chatham

Dan Spack: baritone guitar
Lineage: Sterling

Jim Schoenecker: analog synthesizer, electronics
Lineage: Pele/Mouths/Bhob Rainey/Pressboard

Thomas Wincek: Fender Rhodes piano, electronics
Lineage: Emotional Joystick/Zod Records/Portable Quartet

Press For Birds:

“a flight of airy resonances and Reichian flutters … a gorgeous … unfurling, that rolls up and down into a few anti-climaxes until its final triumphant climb

-Brandon Stousey, Stereogum (01.14.08)

“They don’t need vocals or traditional song structures to make interesting, engaging and energetic music.

-Muzzle of Bees (01.12.08)

“The music, as grandiose and expansive as any take on indie’s vast pallate, is … another solid album in a long line of bands making pop feel epic once more.

-Electronic Voice Phenomenon (01.15.08)

“the first perfect sound of 2008.

-Collective Common (01.18.08)

“Evidence if it were needed of the power of music.

-Mp3 Hugger (01.16.08)

“majestic passages appear as if they were lifted from clouds, with guitars that swarm and proclamate, build, and explode monstrous holes in the dark with their light.

-Parasites & Sycophants (01.18.08)

Booking Contact: chris.rosenau@gmail.com