album reviews: Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I
“The second iteration of Earth has now been recording and touring longer than the first, foundation-shifting phase of the band. You'd be excused, then, for assuming that it's time for Carlson to slip back into the shadows or to again push restart. Rather, on Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I, he returns for his fourth LP with drummer Adrienne Davies, whose tasteful, robust, and slow swing has provided essential ballast for Carlson's thinly etched guitar since 2005. Carlson and Davies do make two personnel changes, though, and they prove essential: The K Records polyglot Karl Blau replaces longtime Earth bassist Don McGreevy, while the swelling organ and horns of Steve Moore are swapped for the much more versatile cello of Lori Goldston.
“These shifts don't turn Earth into a new band, but they do provide a fresh context for Carlson's guitar. On the brilliantly winding "Descent to the Zenith", for instance, Goldston plays against him ever so gently, pushing against his pull, emphasizing the way his lines keep chasing their own tails. Moore's organ used to make Carlson's ideas sound bigger; here, by contrast, Goldston makes them sound smarter. On the album-closing title track, the quartet makes torpid circles for 20 minutes, the guitar, bass, and cello revolving separately around a melody. It's as mesmerizing as an early Earth marathon, just that much more intricate.”
– Pitchfork: Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I review
“Strange thing about Earth, the 20-year-old instrumental Seattle doom band: unlike most heavy-music acts it changed over time as human beings actually do. Its music became lighter and clearer and wiser; it started having more to do with Indian music and La Monte Young and Miles Davis’s “In a Silent Way.” The guitarist Dylan Carlson is still Earth’s leader, playing slow themes over and over with minimal improvisation on “Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I” (Southern Lord), the first of a projected two-parter; but now the cellist Lori Goldston has joined the group, putting an achy drone into the long, dark, peaceful songs. ”
–The New York Times, Smash the Windows, Bang the Cowbell, Ben Ratliff
“Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I, Earth’s sixth studio album, sees a key change to the line-up, with Steve Moore’s organ and horn playing replaced by the cello of Lori Goldston (probably best known from Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged in New York set). Her plaintive playing gives the album a much more antique, maudlin sound than 2008’s The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, and on Hell’s Winter augments an already potently heavyweight sound with impressive bottom-end depth. It’s equally intrinsic on the album’s 20-minute long title-track, artfully skirting the ringing tones of Carlson’s guitar and fellow new recruit Karl Blau’s funk-inflected bass.”
– BBC Music, Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I review
“Angels of Light finds guitarist Dylan Carlson and his drummer since Hex, Adrienne Davies, in a peculiar position. Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull, from 2008, was new Earth perfected — it's a full experience laid out in outlaw-jazz improvisation and Carlson's thick Fender Telecaster tone. It was curious, then, to read that the influences behind the new album were British folk-rock legends Fairport Convention and the nomadic desert-blues band Tinariwen. On paper, that would require a significant change in sound, but upon a cursory listen, not much has changed.
Or has it? It took a few times by my ears, but the regal melodies of Fairport Convention and Pentangle really do permeate the album; they're just brought to a crawling pace and, perhaps more helpfully, outlined by Lori Goldston's sonorous cello (she famously played on Nirvana's Unplugged in New York). But Goldston doesn't merely act as the token acoustic presence; she also bears into her instrument as if it were an anvil, sometimes doubling the low-end with bassist Karl Blau but often grounding the melody in tracks like Hell's Winter.”
– NPR music First Listen: Earth, “Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light 1738221; by Lars Gotrich
With their reverb-drenched, melancholic guitars and somnolent rhythms, Dylan Carson’s revived Earth always seemed the perfect audio accompaniment to a photographic journey through America’s hinterland. But while the band’s last release, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, hymned sweeping expanses and giant skies, this, their sixth studio album, has a more claustrophobic, funereal feel – Robert Frank rather than Ansel Adams, perhaps. The addition of Lori Goldston’s cello — her stringed hum a nod to Carson’s drone-metal past — is the defining factor, bringing depth, substance and emotion to an already rich mix, particularly on the chilling and beautiful Father Midnight. This is Earth’s best-realised work to date — stunning stuff.”
– The Guardian Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I review
interviews
“After fourteen years, forty silent film scores, an acclaimed new- and world-music ensemble, performances with numerous big names on the alternative music circuit, and now a teaching career, everyone still wants to ask Lori Goldston about her time with Nirvana.
“‘It's such a funny calling card,’ says the cellist, whose musical interests have never particularly pointed to playing in sports arenas full of screaming teens. ‘A lot of people get stuck being remembered for something they hated doing. I'm fortunate that I like that band and I like what I did with them.’
“Goldston was performing at a Seattle benefit for victims of the Serbian war when she was spotted by Nirvana bass player Krist Novoselic. (His parents are Croatian.) She toured with the band in late 1993 and into the beginning of 1994, just a few months before Kurt Cobain’s suicide.
“In retrospect, Nirvana’s last days would seem to define an era. At the time, for a young classically-trained musician who had moved from the East Coast to Seattle ‘on a whim,’ the tour was ‘a weird adventure.’ It was a gig, after all, and not necessarily the most musically rewarding one: ‘You're constrained in what you can do, because it has to be the same every day. People want it to sound like what they heard on the radio.’
– Shulamit Kleinerman, A Little Harsher By Design: A Visit with Lori Goldston, Learning Musician
“PUNK GLOBE : Lori, firstly thank you for accepting this interview. You had collobrated with Parenthetical Girls on their 2008 album Entanglements as one of your recent projects. How was 2009 for you?
“LORI GOLDSTON : Thanks very much for your interest in my work. 2009 was a really good year, musically and otherwise; very busy with satisfying projects.
“This year I started playing with Earth, which has been has been wonderful. I've been learning al lot from them about amplification, tone, and effects, and from their amazing focus and clear intention. I also performed with a couple of Jherek Bischoff's projects and with the Portland Cello project, and played on a Secret Chiefs 3 album.
“I composed and recorded soundtracks for two new films, Bass Ackwards with Tara Jane O'Neil, and Crashing Waves a short film by Britta Johnson; I was commissioned to write and perform music with a dance piece in New York and a theater piece in Seattle.
“I've been playing more and more solo shows, and spent much of the summer on a solo tour through the east coast and midwest.
“Also, a local documentary film maker, Gabriel Miller, is making a film, Degrees of Inspiration, in which I’m one of three artists that he’s profiling.”
– Interview, Punk Globe
concert reviews
“A few nights later, in the repurposed industrial shed called the Works, Seattle musician Lori Goldston took an entirely different tack, playing cello to Carl Theodor Dryer’s silent La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928). The resultant dialogue — a counterpoint of acquiescence and resistance — was deeply ambivalent, complex where Miller’s treatment had been reductive. Perhaps her affection for the film is what allowed her to become its full collaborator. Goldston has responded live to Dreyer nearly as often as miller has dealt with Griffith, yet she managed to be truly “live” — present where Miller was, at best, indifferent.
“Goldston’s music constituted a kind of physical enactment of listening. She began in silence — absorbing the moment and the film — and then her sound emerged, shifting and responding to what she took in. This dynamic, listening (as well as its companion problem of not being heard), was a constant problem at the Works. In the bigger halls, it rarely appeared to matter. Performances on the main stages, whether pleasing or disappointing, came and went as thought the moment was neither here nor there, simply a wrinkle in the endlessly unfolding fabric of the artist’s motion through the world.”
– Excerpt from an article by Matthew Stadler in Artforum
“Lori Goldston uses her cello the way a king uses his army: to build empires, and then rule over them. This Saturday in Olympia, she joins forces with Kill Rock Stars artists C Average to present a new live score to F. W. Murnau’s legendary Nosferatu. If you have never taken in the decrepit splendor of Olympia’s Capitol Theater, be assured that ghosts are only one of its many charms. This should be a very enjoyable moviegoing experience.”
– The Stranger, Seattle
reviews of Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York
“A lot has been made about the drumming of Dave Grohl on here, how soft and perfect it is, but the real star is Lori Goldston, who embellishes several of the numbers with her swelling cello. The cello adds alot to the stripped down sound Nirvana absolutly nails. Of course, the rendition of “Come As You Are” is terribly chilling, but the Leadbelly cover, Where Did You Sleep Last Night is as great as a swan song anybody could ever hope for.
–Review of Nirvana's Unplugged
as one of the “Top 10 Live Albums Ever”, on last.fm
“Bathed in golden light, Kurt Cobain quietly sits, surrounded by billows of lilies and flickering candles. “What are they tuning — a harp?” he cracks in mock irritation to no one in particular when there’s a prolonged wait between songs. If it sounds like heaven with an edge, it was, or the closest one could get to it on an MTV soundstage, where Nirvana played an all-acoustic set last fall. What would become one of the band’s last U.S. performances can now be heard on a new album, MTV Unplugged in New York. And if that title seems a bit, well, obvious, it’ll have to do.
“There are spare and gorgeous spots everywhere: when Grohl’s voice wraps chillingly around Cobain’s on the disturbingly lovely “Polly”; the wounded “Something in the Way”; Lori Goldston’s cello welling up in mournful counterpoint, like Cobain’s alter ego, on the last word of the lyric “I think I’m dumb/Maybe just happy.” The band is never better than it is on “All Apologies”: subtle, passionate, intuiting exactly what is needed from each of them to make their union whole, nurturing the intensity at their center.”
–E. Hobson, Rolling Stone
the black cat orchestra
“Seattle may not have the largest cello community, but its brightest star is unquestionably Goldston. This solo performance with projected visuals should showcase every facet of the Black Cat Orchestra co-founder: her love of improvisation, her ingenious adaptation of folk and classical tropes, and her incomparable skill at performing in accompaniment to film.”
–Best of Seattle Readers Picks: Best Local Jazz Ensemble,
Seattle Weekly
“When I hear the Black Cat Orchestra play — the deep moan of the cello, the resonant huff of the horn, the slightly sinister lilt of the accordion — I find myself longing for Old World things I know only secondhand. 
For a turn-of-the-century cafe in Vienna, with heavy burgundy drapes and a cup of strong coffee, served with a Sacher torte and a tiny glass of water on the side. For a night walk along the banks of the Bosporus, its backdrop Istanbul’s exotic mix of European and what was once called the Orient. For a seedy bar in Weimar Berlin.
“It reminds me of the way that Woody Allen uses Gershwin to evoke a New York that doesn’t exist (or at least never existed for me in the 24 years I lived there). It’s a kind of cinematic, or perhaps theatrical, evocation, unspecific but potent, not quite real but vivid nonetheless. It’s not surprising, then, that Black Cat Orchestra grew out of theatrical roots. The duo that forms the group’s spine, Kyle Hanson and Lori Goldston, played together in an orchestra for the theater group Run/Remain, along with Don Crevie, who is still with them, and Joseph Zajonc, who no longer plays with the group but is featured on a number of tracks on its new CD, “Mysteries Explained”.
“In its current core incarnation, the Black Cat Orchestra is Goldston on cello, Hanson on accordion, Crevie on horn (what you and I would call French horn, but what horn players call, simply, horn), Scott Granlund on saxophones, Jeff Teitelbaum on standup bass, and Emily Marsh on drums. They are sometimes graced with the presence of Jessika Kenney, a singer trained in gamelan music. The musicians’ extracurricular activities tell you a great deal about their depth of skill and the range of their interests. Marsh is formerly of Faster Tiger, and Teitelbaum was with Ensemble Sub Masa; Granlund currently plays with a polka band, and Goldston toured with Nirvana behind “In Utero” (1993-1994) and appears on MTV’s “Unplugged” with the band.
“Their first official gig as the Black Cat Orchestra was for a wedding in 1989, and since then they have certainly expanded the scope of their work. Although they still play lots of weddings, they have also played live scores for silent movies (for Shining Moment Productions, On the Boards, and at Bumbershoot), are featured on David Byrne’s album “Feelings”, and are much in demand for unusual events around Seattle. I’ve heard them at art openings and office parties, at readings and restaurants (this past winter Hanson and Goldston did a stint of weekly music for diners at the Pink Door), any time the mood needs to be just this side of real, anywhere that a mix of klezmer band and Fellini soundtrack is appropriate.
“Mysteries Explained” is a mix of found traditional works and original pieces, many of which the group has used for silent-movie scores. The films that the Black Cat Orchestra is often paired with are surrealist classics, such as Antonin Artaud’s “The Seashell and the Clergyman”, in which the challenge is to suggest a mood without imposing a narrative where no narrative belongs. The original works are frankly modern (some percussive, some lyrical, some Miles Davis-jazzy) but still evocative and theatrical; one very short piece by Zajonc, called “With Light at Window,” is like an entr’acte: there is a feeling of scenery being changed, of sorrow to come. Predominantly, however, there is a feeling of otherness, especially with the traditional songs. They seem to come from cultures — Balkan, Turkish, Bulgarian — that we know just little enough about to be transported without any of reality’s pesky insistence.
“There’s a lively song called “Bucimis” that must have had an equally lively folk dance to go with it. There’s “Introit,” a slow, heartbreaking liturgical piece originally written for voices alone. There are boisterous pieces that suggest large families celebrating together, and abstract works that speak to solitude, perhaps self-inflicted. The remarkable thing about “Mysteries Explained” is that despite this wildly swinging range of styles, the album has a gorgeous unity, a moody rightness that intensifies the more you listen to it. It’s the same kind of feeling I get from certain Tom Waits albums: density, emotion, a bit of humor.
“Hanson and Goldston do not claim to be ethnomusicologists; they are not of the school that demands that ethnic music be played authentically. Both admire the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone: the genuine, filtered — but not insincerely — through cinema, through kitsch. In fact, it’s the band’s very sincerity that gives its music both a slightly cheesy edge (which Hanson and Goldston love) as well as its loveliness. It’s the kind of music that makes people want to get up and dance the kinds of old dances no one knows the steps to. I’ve watched these dancers: They’re awkward, they’re ridiculous, and they’re so, so happy. (3 stars)
–Emily Hall, Sincerity and Otherness: The Charm of the Black Cat Orchestra, The Stranger
“Founded in 1992, the Black Cat Orchestra has been acclaimed for its performances of live incidental music for silent films. Next weekend, On the Boards continues to present a triple bill from the ’20s, with original scores for two of them played by the eight-piece ensemble. Hans Richter’s short “Vormittagsspuk” (”Ghosts Before Breakfast”), his dadaist document from 1927, is full of flying derbies, self-ambulatory body parts, and twisted silliness that recalls Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations. A more serious affair is “The Seashell and the Clergyman”, a 1928 surrealist melodrama by Germaine Dulac and Antonin Artaud. Such plot as there is involves a love (or maybe just lust) triangle among a faintly psychotic priest, an oxlike military man, and a saucer-eyed blonde. Except for a few clearly descriptive moments (a waltz for a ball scene, a crash on the high hat as the titular seashell gets smashed), the BCO’s music for these two films stands independently; only rarely does the music directly respond to the films.
“Opening the show was a sweet Felix the Cat cartoon titled Felix in Germ Mania, which I at first misread as Felix in Germania — an understandable slip, considering the pronounced neoCentral European idiom that’s the BCO’s trademark. The foundation of its style, a combination of haunting minor-key tunes in catchy dance rhythms, calls to mind a feast of influences: klezmer and Gypsy, Budapest coffeehouses and Italian restaurants, Kurt Weill and Fiddler on the Roof. The BCO's instrumentation — horn (Don Crevie), cello (Lori Goldston), saxophone (Scott Granlund), accordion (Kyle Hanson), voice (Jessica Kenney), guitar (Russ Meltzer), bass (Matthew Sperry), and percussion (Joseph Zajonc) — is rich with low- and middle-register instruments, an aural analogy to the shadowy cinematography it accompanies. Every now and then, Kenney or Hanson got to float above the crowd in a high, ethereal melody, a lovely effect.
“About two-thirds of this music was newly composed by BCO members; the rest was arranged by them from traditional folk tunes or, interestingly, early music. Their “Seashell” score opens with three Renaissance vocal works, two by Orlando di Lasso and one anonymous. This liturgical music, the BCO’s curious colors, and the expressionistic film made a striking combination. There are other ensembles in the area that do music for European black-and-white silents: the Young Composers‘ Collective (whose recently recorded Metropolis score should be out on CD any day now), and composer Timothy Brock and the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. These groups, including the Black Cat Orchestra, make up a popular local genre, and as with any “school” so well established, there are numerous clichés to avoid and multiple envelopes to be pushed. Which is what made the BCO’s Renaissance repertory so welcome — it shows a willingness to move musically beyond the time and place of each film and to explore where other music/image juxtapositions might lead.
– Gavin Borchert, Seattle Weekly
“The Black Cat Orchestra succeed in creating what can only be described as a dream cabaret, pulling elements of klezmer and gypsy music out the foggy seaside air, inciting audience members to dance slowly and jerkily like puppets.”
– Traci Vogel, The Stranger
collaborations with Mirah
“Share This Place is the album from K Records standout Mirah, but it also a multimedia project commissioned by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the Seattle International Children’s Festival, comprised of the songs contained herein and accompanying stop-motion video by Britta Johnson. Inspired in part by the writings of French entomologist Jean Henri Fabrè and the Capek brothers’[sic] anthropomorphic drama The Insect Play, with a dash of the insectile existentialism of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Share This Place is a palimpsest where the separate fiefdoms of humans and insects are reconciled in one teeming kingdom.
“The album is more like To All We Stretch the Open Arm, the collection of traditional folk Mirah recorded with Seattle’s Black Cat Orchestra, than her beloved C’mon Miracle. Forgoing that album’s sketches, snippets, and snapshots, which were of a piece with the naively ramshackle twee for which her label is renowned, Share This Place employs a decidedly more adult, historically rooted method of songwriting and performing. These full-bodied songs, sturdily played by Spectratone International, draw from a variety of Asian and European folk idioms for their torch-lit, supple swoon. Kyle Hanson’s drunkenly reeling accordion and Lori Goldston’s weepy cello betray a strong Klezmer influence, while Kane Mathis’s flickering oud (similar to a lute) injects Middle Eastern strains. Sympathetic production by Phil Elvrum and Steve Fisk amplifies Mirah’s idiosyncrasies — her non-sexual sensuality, her scenery-chewing vocal projection.
“Share This Place takes these concepts as givens: Since moving indoors, humankind has forgotten its symbiotic relationship with nature, viewing it instead as something essentially other. We designate some flora as desirable, other flora as weeds, and wreak destruction accordingly. Shirking the hard work and sacrifice of genuine preservation, we build natural preserves where we can absorb the bounty of wilderness, then rocket back to the industrial lifestyle that is inexorably devouring it. We regard the enclosures in which we live as interstices in the natural continuum, and woe be to any insect — those stinging, buzzing pests — that trespass our domain.
“Mirah understands that in a world where we’d rather let corporations build windmill farms in exchange for permission to pollute than to vote, with our dollars, against them polluting so damn much, humankind’s sense of empathy is more direly in need of rejuvenation than EPA policy, and she begins the work on a resounding note with album opener and stand-out Community. Singing with an arch lilt over a cursive scrawl of acoustic guitar, Mirah seems to choose an unambiguous side in the phylogenic war: ‘You have but two, we have six/ We can use them to such great accomplishment.’
“She goes on to sing praises to the collaborative societies of insects, and humanity takes its fair share of knocks. But her mechanistic view of insect life — ‘we communicate with chemicals’ — is tempered by an acknowledgement that the exchange of pheromones is infinitely mysterious, despite science’s handy explanations: ‘It’s an expressive art, instinctually smart/ Secretions quiet and dependable.’ In an era when we’ve chosen to understand our feelings as nothing more than the emulsion of certain chemical balances in our brains, couldn’t she just as easily be singing about human existence? The song isn’t, as it might seem on the surface, anti-human; it’s pro-community, looking to egoless activity of the insect kingdom for inspiration.”
– Pitchfork, Share This Place review, Brian Howe
“Mirah’s new album on K records, Share This Place: Stories and Observations (with Spectratone International backing her up), is more coherent and intellectually stimulating than any of her previous solo efforts. Commissioned by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the Seattle International Children's Festival, each song has an accompanying short film by stop-motion animator Britta Johnson. The arrangements use more instruments and a broader range of influences, from the expected klezmer and indie rock to European and Mediterranean folk. The majority of the songs are inspired by the writings of Jean Henri Fabre, the 19th century entomologist. Fabre wrote children’s stories about insects, and Mirah has mined his work describing insect development and intraspecies relations for vignettes that speak to human behavior.
“The lyrics on Share This Place are dense with difficult scientific terminology, but Mirah manages to fit three- and four-syllable words into her songs without forcing the rhythm. In the vast majority of tracks, Mirah takes on the voice of a specific species of insect and guides us through its world. The whirling (dare I say buzzing) musical arrangements of “Supper,” “My Prize,” and Credo Cigalia” mirror the narrative action of Mirah’s lyrics admirably. “Community” analyzes human behavior from a colonial insect’s point of view in a way that is clever without being too cute, and precisely plucked strings nicely compliment the speakers' uniformity of mind. With few exceptions, the songs sound like excerpts from a musical charade staged for 19th century gentry at great expense, the kind of entertainment meant to be discussed repeatedly over the course of a long stay at some manor in the country.”
– Dusted Magazine.com, Share This Place review
“Ahoy kids! We’ve got a Mirah double whammy! It’s mighty clear she’s been keeping herself knee-deep in music with not only this her collaborative albums with her Black Mountain Project partner Ginger Brooks Takahashi and here with the Black Cat Orchestra, but also her “C’mon Miracle” solo album. This woman eats, sleeps, dreams and breathes music.
“To All We Stretch The Open Arm” is a particularly potent and moving collaboration in that as the folks at YoYo Records describe it “(the songs) were chosen, arranged, and performed... because these times call for such songs. These songs come from places and decades that have seen dissent, passion, and revolution... Simply, this is an album of what would have once been called protest songs.
“It wonderfully displays her broad scope of style and delivery. Dramatic and dynamic yet very sensitive and down to earth, Mirah flits and flirts with haunting folk, jaunty old style musicals, and slinky cabaret — singing in Spanish, Italian and English. For those familiar with her last few of releases, it’s no surprise that she does so with ample impressive flair. Seattle’s Black Cat Orchestra keep perfect step right along with her for the length of this album. This collection features their versions of songs originally by such artists as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Kurt Weill, as well as her own song “Monument” from her fine last album Advisory Committee. Nonetheless, Cup heartily sez “Recommended!”
– Aquarius Records
“My first exposure to Eastern European folk came earlier this year with Black Ox Orkestar’s “Ver Tanzt?”. It was a waltzing album of thickly spun beauty, but the casual espousal of violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict made me slightly uncomfortable. Mirah with the Black Cat Orchestra’s “To All We Stretch the Open Arm” provides a much more palatable, but equally barbed take on the traditional Old World protest record, preaching a message of universal acceptance rather than “us against them” ideology.
“Mirah and her cohort draw from a global litany of influences (Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Kurt Weill, Bertold Brecht, Horacio Guarany, Stephen Foster, along with a handful of Spanish and Italian traditionals) and unites them perfectly with a simple sweep of the cello, a squeeze of the accordion and the ancient creak of an acoustic guitar. There’s so much beauty in the dour, spare arrangements of “El Cant dels Ocells” and “Hard Times,” it’s surprising the more theatrical songs “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” and “Bella Ciao” don’t feel the least bit out of place or distracting from the album’s overall world-weary view. It’s fitting that a band so adept at unifying disparate source material so easily could do the same with conflicting emotional themes. The disc certainly benefits because of it, proving that even though we may currently live surrounded by distressing events, there has to be an occasional ray of light to be moving toward. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
– Ink19