Fountain
- RS-57
- CD
- Edition of 500
- 1. Dawn (2:47)
- 2. Four Years (4:19)
- 3. Well Wisher (1:50)
- 4. Route 1 (5:11)
- 5. Hungry/Haunted (3:59)
- 6. Covered Mirrors (4:22)
- 7. Fountain (3:07)
- 8. Eve (7:46)
- 9. Night Blooms (3:06)
- 10. Natural West (5:02)
- 11. Finding Time (3:02)
Fountain is the first solo recording by Danny Paul Grody, founding member of both San Francisco-based bands Tarentel and The Drift. Centered around sparkling acoustic guitar motifs, the album unfolds as a series of hypnotic mood pieces and evening hymns with a spectral lyricism invoking scenes of moving images and passing landscapes. Conceived from a collection of home recordings made over the course of a year, the album perfectly distills many of the musical forms from which Grody gravitates towards, namely the chiming kora music of West Africa, the 70's wave of American underground acoustic guitar players, and a number of long form / drone composers and performers. Together these influences combine to produce something unique and personal. Many of the songs are formed around mantra-like figures, small clusters of notes stacked upon one another like building blocks. Bell-like harmonics, organ beds, location recordings, and backgrounds of feedback are textured throughout, giving the record a lovely patina of earth tones and moments of shimmering bright light. Fountain is an assured first statement, a record that has been hidden in Grody for many years and has proven to be well worth the wait. CD edition of 500.
First proper solo record from this core member of SF post rockers Tarentel, as well as the mastermind behind another post rock combo we dig, the even dreamier The Drift. Fountain is simply fantastic, a subtle and varied affair, that dips into various sounds and moods, with acoustic and electric guitars as the main instrumentation, although the guitars are augmented by melodica, keyboard, bow, voice, and of course, rain. The sounds here are delicate and crystalline, lush and warm, dreamy and sun dappled, deftly fingerpicked abstract Appalachia, gives way to melancholic folk, chamber music drifts into thick layered dronemusic, hushed one second, exuberant and joyful the next, a gorgeous, ever shifting songsuite, that definitely harkens back to classic seventies folk music, but is infused with the more abstract home brewed abstract bedroom dronemusic of today, as well as nods to the post rock that informs so much of the music Grody plays. Totally blissful and dreamy, from the hushed opener, simply strummed guitars, and slow shifting overtones, to the spare finger picked beauty of "Well Wisher", that gradually blossoms into a sunshiney bit of glimmery instrumental dream pop, to the pop ambient haze of "Covered Mirrors", to the sprawling "Eve", a gorgeous folk flecked steel string work out, interrupted part way by a gorgeous cloud of lush shimmering whir, to the dark, muted, blurred guitarscape that makes up the record's closer "Finding Time", notes suspended in space, tones drawn out into extended humming soft focus drones, little melodic fragments chiming in the distance, all moving glacially through a sepia toned haze. So so lovely. - Aquarius Records