once upon a time i fell in love with kranky

Once upon a time, when I was a younger girl, and had more expendable income to jizz on records, I fell in love with Kranky. The Chicago-based label lured me into its web of aural delight, took me behind the rainbow and over the edge of the horizon. It seemed the artists they released were painting with sound; great expansive landscapes of rich blues and greens, cool broad valleys and towering cliffs of frightening height; ornate courtyards of twisting vines cast sharp shadows in the sunlight that sliced through the green stems. It is this which I bring you today.

Many of it’s artists are top notch purveyors of that vibe which I described above, and those who don’t create these soundscapes directly still carry the crucial notions of space and silence that create the echoes between the sounds. This is what started it all:

Labradford – Soft Return (from Prazision LP)

But this is what got me going… The prettily gargled soliloquy and dreamy guitars are a cloud of good intentions, a sound I find echoed in the likes of Julianna Barwick.

Jessica Bailiff – Swallowed (from s/t album)

Their Refinement…. got heavily blogged on it’s release, so I though it was about time we took a look back, at what they did before everyone fell upon that record. This is taken from The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid

Stars Of The Lid – Requiem for Dying Mothers (Part 2)

White Rainbow released a new EP recently, just as I found myself returning to his debut from last year. Mystic Prism from Prism Of Eternal Now was blogged a bit, but the elastic syncopation of opener Pulses was overlooked, which to me sounds as if Robert Wyatt is humming the stringed melody.

White Rainbow – Pulses

If you, like me, love this sound too, then pop over to the website and purchase something, the postage fees are not at all bad, and the vinyl is pretty good value too, which reminds me, the packaging is (often, not always) to die for. Have a kranky christmas…