{"title":"Nathan Bowles","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"nansemond","title":"Nansemond","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe second album by Nathan Bowles (Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Steve Gunn) deploys banjo, percussion, piano and voice to explore the rugged country between the poles of Appalachian old-time traditions and ecstatic, minimalist drone. 'Nansemond' is the name of a fading dream as much as it is a place name; the word has largely disappeared from maps of Virginia. Once a vast swampland, now a ghost-choked locale. This is the wetlands landscape Nathan Bowles conjures with this cinematic suite of contemplatice set pieces. LP - Vinyl is 150 gram vinyl with full colour inserts and download code.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Paradise of Bachelors","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50492674965835,"sku":"381824","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/6076de3d-6ceb-4155-a904-b7d405b69297_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727692973"},{"product_id":"whole-and-cloven","title":"Whole and Cloven","description":"\u003cp\u003eSince his last album Nansemond (2014), Bowles has sustained and strengthened his fruitful relationships as a ensemble player with Steve Gunn (drums, piano and organ, banjo); the Black Twig Pickers (banjo, percussion); and Pelt (struck and bowed percussion), while undertaking projects with new accomplice Jake Xerxes Fussell and old friend and mentor Michael Chapman, all of which inform this record. But he has also continued to refine his solo practice, carrying it far beyond the confines of any reductive and rote solo banjo designations. On this third solo album, his most exquisite, immersive, and ambitious to date, he again augments his mesmeric clawhammer banjo pieces with piano, percussion, and vocals (mostly wordless, some wordy). The result showcases the full range of Bowles' compositional and performative versatility. Instead of the programmatic place-based narratives of Nansemond, the seven songs on Whole \u0026amp; Cloven offer a stoic meditation on absence, loss, and fragmentation, populating those experiential gaps - the weighty interstices and places in-between - with stillness and wonder. Whereas its predecessor was directly inspired by the mutating environment, and his mutating memories, of his childhood home on the fringes of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia, the new album turns inward, exploring inscapes rather than landscapes. Since Nansemond, Bowles has moved from the mountains of Blacksburg, Virginia - his longtime home - to the Piedmont city of Durham, North Carolina, an uprooting and displacement that perhaps precipitated the divergent iterations and forking paths on display here. Album centerpiece \"I Miss My Dog\" contains teeming multitudes of memory and regret in its eleven vaporous minutes, crawling from stately, deep-water soundings to torrents of hiccupping, densely woven banjo and piano latticework redolent of anxious longing. It sounds like storm-blown rain. As a whole (ahem), Whole \u0026amp; Cloven repeatedly swaps lenses, wide angle for macro, demonstrating a new comfort with long shots and close-ups alike. Straddling Appalachian string band music and avant-garde composition but beholden to neither idiom, Nathan proves himself heir to deconstructivist tradition-bearers like Henry Flynt and Jack Rose. 140g virgin vinyl LP with heavy-duty 24-point reverse board matte jacket (featuring artwork by John Henry Toney), printed inner sleeve \u0026amp; DL.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Paradise of Bachelors","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50494717329739,"sku":"404987","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50494717985099,"sku":"404984","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/b41cb23c-ef14-41d0-b177-f53559d2b8ea_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727707646"},{"product_id":"plainly-mistaken","title":"Plainly Mistaken","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn his playfully sub versive fourth solo album, Nathan Bowles (Steve Gunn, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) extends his acclaimed banjo and percussion practice into the full-band realm for the first time, showcasing both delicate solo meditations and smoldering, swinging ensemble explorations featuring Casey Toll (Jake Xerxes Fussell, Mt. Moriah) on double bass and Rex McMurry (CAVE) on drums. As he considers the cycles of deceit and self-deception that shape both our personal and political lives, a mixed mood of melancholy and merriment permeates Bowles’s own compositions as well as the interpretive material, which draws from traditional Appalachian repertoires and the diverse songbooks of Julie Tippetts, Cousin Emmy, and Silver Apples.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCD - Housed in Gatefold Jacket with LP replica Artwork.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLP - Deluxe 140 Gram Virgin Vinyl housed in heavy-duty board jacket and Download.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Paradise of Bachelors","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50497785430347,"sku":"1042266","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50497785692491,"sku":"1042267","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/83ebb94a-0946-4671-b91b-74e749896e1f_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727732727"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/nathan-bowles.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}