A review from Roots Music Report for our new record, Gone to the Ground
This is a brilliant album that will not appeal to a very wide swath of listeners. It doesn’t fit into a tidy category. The sound has been called alt country meets doom metal, and “Shell-shocked balladry disintegrates into noisy improvised sections.” It is an experiment with sounds. Led by vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and composer Antony DiGennaro, it features a wide variety of vocalist and musicians (bassist David Tranchina, guitarist Max Kutner, various woodwinds player Ulrich Krieger, violist Lauren Elizabeth Baba, cellist James Barry, guitarist and vocalist Laura Jean Anderson, and harmony vocalists Matthew Cockcroft, Annie Lopresti, and David Powell) who share DiGennaro’s vision. The CD cover lists no personnel or song titles, which is somewhat challenging. It opens with “Drown,” which incorporates the voices and instrumentation effectively. The title cut is clearly an alt country number backed by the woodwinds. “Hatchett” utilizes the strings over vocals, and the closing “Goodbye” is dense with sounds. College radio might embrace this.
This is a brilliant album that will not appeal to a very wide swath of listeners. It doesn’t fit into a tidy category. The sound has been called alt country meets doom metal, and “Shell-shocked balladry disintegrates into noisy improvised sections.” It is an experiment with sounds. Led by vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and composer Antony DiGennaro, it features a wide variety of vocalist and musicians (bassist David Tranchina, guitarist Max Kutner, various woodwinds player Ulrich Krieger, violist Lauren Elizabeth Baba, cellist James Barry, guitarist and vocalist Laura Jean Anderson, and harmony vocalists Matthew Cockcroft, Annie Lopresti, and David Powell) who share DiGennaro’s vision. The CD cover lists no personnel or song titles, which is somewhat challenging. It opens with “Drown,” which incorporates the voices and instrumentation effectively. The title cut is clearly an alt country number backed by the woodwinds. “Hatchett” utilizes the strings over vocals, and the closing “Goodbye” is dense with sounds. College radio might embrace this.
Review by Daniel Corral for Fear for the Dust: Volume I
And the Madness that Followed... is the new solo album by guitarist, improviser, and Tears of the Moosechaser songwriter Antony DiGennaro. It is an album steeped in crumpled Americana, all squeaky hinges and leaky roofs.
The songs are full of slow motion, close-mic'd melancholia reminiscent of Sparklehorse's more morose moments, mixed with the burnt-to-a-crisp edges of Steve Von Till's solo work. These shellshocked ballads disintegrate into noisy improvised sections akin to the wide spectrum washes of The Swans.
Songs fade in and out again, like someone emerging from a thick, night-time fog. The result doesn't sound like a sonic effect, but feels like an organic extension of the entropic aural ecosystem set up by the songs.
Excerpt from a Moosechaser Review
Tears of the Moosechaser is not my normal cup of tea. It feels more like a swig of Absinthe. It can transport you into turn of the century hallucinations. The funny thing is that parts of Songs for a Sinister Woman would seriously creep me out if I were to listen to them in the dark but other songs feel as comfortable as the warm embrace of a knitted afghan my grandmother made me. On one hand, the album is very diverse in tone and on the other hand, one could consider the songs in total, to not fit together. I guess I always opt for diversity more than anything else and I can live with the musical schizophrenia. If you are not one to venture away from your indie music or electronica or whatever you are into, take a chance, move outside your comfort zone and give Tears of the Moosechaser a spin. I suggest you do so with the lights on.
- by Adler Bloom (visit American Pancake for the rest of the review)
Tears of the Moosechaser is not my normal cup of tea. It feels more like a swig of Absinthe. It can transport you into turn of the century hallucinations. The funny thing is that parts of Songs for a Sinister Woman would seriously creep me out if I were to listen to them in the dark but other songs feel as comfortable as the warm embrace of a knitted afghan my grandmother made me. On one hand, the album is very diverse in tone and on the other hand, one could consider the songs in total, to not fit together. I guess I always opt for diversity more than anything else and I can live with the musical schizophrenia. If you are not one to venture away from your indie music or electronica or whatever you are into, take a chance, move outside your comfort zone and give Tears of the Moosechaser a spin. I suggest you do so with the lights on.
- by Adler Bloom (visit American Pancake for the rest of the review)
Review for the solo guitar album... A Lonesome Fog
Hmmmm. Sounds as if Antony has more than ten fingers as he swirls multiple notes on that acoustic guitar, some bent, some not. It sounds similar to the one plays inside the piano by muting and banging on the strings. Some of the pieces are a bit violent and eruptive in nature. Some more tranquil and even calm. But everything is quite enchanting. Certain strings buzz, while others are twisted into odd shapes. At times, Antony reminds me of Elliott Sharp, but not as angular or intense. There's definitely some alien sounds as Antony bangs on the strings with some objects, yet it makes sense or tells a short story. This is a most impressive debut from a gifted guitarist worthy of some recognition.
- Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
Hmmmm. Sounds as if Antony has more than ten fingers as he swirls multiple notes on that acoustic guitar, some bent, some not. It sounds similar to the one plays inside the piano by muting and banging on the strings. Some of the pieces are a bit violent and eruptive in nature. Some more tranquil and even calm. But everything is quite enchanting. Certain strings buzz, while others are twisted into odd shapes. At times, Antony reminds me of Elliott Sharp, but not as angular or intense. There's definitely some alien sounds as Antony bangs on the strings with some objects, yet it makes sense or tells a short story. This is a most impressive debut from a gifted guitarist worthy of some recognition.
- Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
Another excerpt from a review of Songs for a Sinister Woman...
"...Their sound is indeed predicated on fusion, since it is an amalgamation of different genres and subgenres, as well as styles and techniques. Each song has its own mood, just as each song evokes its own imagery, like old Depression era photographs of dust bowl shack towns and filthy-faced folk, piles of animal bones in the dirt, Johnson family vagabonds hopping the unlocked freights out of small desert towns for large metropolises, burlesque houses and old-time harlots lounging on dusty sofas, drunkards stumbling down dark alleyways in the post-midnight hours, love stories, tragedies, rustic scenery, the seemingly endless stretches of highway and blurry miles to the weary traveler, and so on in that way. Also, it is highly texturized music, at once both savage and refined, mad and sane, bitter and sweet, ugly and beautiful, dark and light, rural and urban, and old-timey and modern, among a good many other contraries. But above all it is a fusion of wood and rusty metal. Wood and rusty metal."
- James Carlson, Roots Music Examiner
Review of Feedback Wave Riders at Open Gate
This edition of Feedback Wave Riders -- three electric guitarists tangling with two multiwindmen -- melded the sound-essence aesthetics of the Cold Blue label with dense linear notions of free jazz. Lemme set it up for you. On the right, the impassively alert uncle Michael Jon Fink sat and touched his guitar with extreme fingertip sensitivity while kind of directing the traffic. Next, the younger, bearded longhair Antony DiGennaro (a cross between Jesse Colin Young and Kenny Loggins) had a more aggro approach involving a ruler and a stick stuck in his strings. In the middle, our famous distinguished whitehair Vinny Golia shuffled among seven wind instruments, from tiny to huge. To his right, the determined ascetic Ulrich Krieger blew almost as many. On the far left, the bikerish Chas Smith hunched over a pedal-steel guitar augmented with a self-made meander of thin vertical metal tuned rods. The five soon proved that such an array can paint most every color in the sound spectrum.
I'll call the three segments of the FWR set "Waves," "Peace" and "Pain."
The first part rolled dynamically. Krieger and Golia set up undulations on E-flat and bass clarinets; Smith shrieked sustained metal tension, rocked gentle caresses with his slide or rustled the metal grasses; DiGennaro barely controlled screaming peaks of feedback; Fink spread transparent atmosphere. Cosmic ghost stuff.
The peace part was more static, like something out of the Tibetan Himalayas, especially via Golia's cooing on some kind of exotic flute and the liver-massaging foghorn blasts that groaned forth from a saxophone as big as himself. There was mountain wind from Krieger's sax, grainy drone from Smith's bowed rods; the musicians listened to one another beautifully. At times, the ensemble exhaled infinitely textured chords like a gigantic pipe organ, mounting virtual crescendos of quiet that made me clench my teeth in terror.
The pain part built after Fink stroked his strings with a paint brush; the improvisation gained a mournful quality from Golia's ghaita-like Arabisms on a miniature straight sax, and shattered into a catharsis of reed squeals and feedback. I mean, it really hurt.
All this and no sharp edges, therefore no permanent wounds. Wonderful.
And another for the Moose...
I suppose if Tom Waits wasn’t born in California but rather underneath a moonshine still in Kentucky then you’d have Tears Of The Moosechaser. It’s that sporadic, bouncy, wild man vibe that is track three, “A Lonesone Fog” off of Songs For A Sinister Woman. Like a death ring the track chimes in and the tale begins. “Sleeping medicine to pass the time, my mind a tangled string of beads rides gondolas through bleeding streams into a leaky sink."
Formed in 2008, Songs For A Sinister Woman was released in August of this past year. “A Lonesome Fog” screeches and scrapes with a mix of country, avant-garde, and bluegrass to create a sound I can’t say I’ve ever heard before. It’s exciting, creepy, inquisitive and original. All the while wrapping itself around a Western filled with spurs, dust, tumble weed and whiskey. - Brad Tilbe, Delusions of Adequacy
I suppose if Tom Waits wasn’t born in California but rather underneath a moonshine still in Kentucky then you’d have Tears Of The Moosechaser. It’s that sporadic, bouncy, wild man vibe that is track three, “A Lonesone Fog” off of Songs For A Sinister Woman. Like a death ring the track chimes in and the tale begins. “Sleeping medicine to pass the time, my mind a tangled string of beads rides gondolas through bleeding streams into a leaky sink."
Formed in 2008, Songs For A Sinister Woman was released in August of this past year. “A Lonesome Fog” screeches and scrapes with a mix of country, avant-garde, and bluegrass to create a sound I can’t say I’ve ever heard before. It’s exciting, creepy, inquisitive and original. All the while wrapping itself around a Western filled with spurs, dust, tumble weed and whiskey. - Brad Tilbe, Delusions of Adequacy