NEWS: Samara Lubelski looks forward to a Future Slip
In the land of television sitcoms, the audience is often presented a bit of a dilemma: the lead male or female, promiscuous and uninhibited, builds up their defenses in an effort to cushion the blow to their one true love when they happen to ooze their love juices all over random hood rats. It allows viewers to feel anger, yet hope that the two star-crossed Rob and Laura Petry wannabes end up together in the end (AKA before heavy syndication).
Samara Lubelski has nothing to do with such convoluted writing efforts. Lubelski is a master of mixing the best of pop mores into her bubbling brew of mild psychedelia, with just a hint of folk. Her ideal of
Future Slip has nothing to do with make-believe love but rather good music that deserves to be loved by you. So when
Future Slip slinks its way onto store shelves August 18th via
Ecstatic Peace, perhaps you should forgo the Season 3 DVD set of generic sitcom soap opera and pick up something healthy for your mind and soul.
Like some sort of two-way prism, all of the components of what would eventually be called the New Weird America passed through the Hall of Fame/Tower
Recordings bottleneck in New York. The beardo folk, the freeform improvisation, the krautrock, heavy psych, 20th century avant-garde, ethnographic field recordings,cthe Godz, the Fugs. This rainbow of influences was all turned into a single blistering white light on free Monday nights at the Cooler and gallery parties.
The scattered releases made by Hall of Fame/Tower (the latter of which Samara joined) were glued to turntables from Atlanta to Brattleboro, and their influence
passed outward into a variegation of likeminded fellow-travelers.
After those bands ended, Samara made the crucial ‘In the Valley’ album (with Matt Valentine producing) and then announced she was going to make a Pop record. Over the course of 3 LP’s on The Social Registry and DeStijl, the occasional murmur from the Hall of Fame days became a full-blown songwriting affair.
Samara found a working method that she continues with to this day: Cutting basics in her second home of Stuttgart, Germany with members of psych-freakers
Metabolismus and bringing the tracks back to New York to collaborate with her U.S. cronies, which this time includes PG Six, Helen Rush, Steve Shelley, Willie
Lane, Nicolas Vernhes, Werner Notzel, Moritz Finkebiner, and Thilio Kuhn.
In 2007 longtime fan Thurston Moore recruited Samara and her violin skillz for his ‘Trees Outside the Academy’ album and tour. Familiar with the solo work,
Thurston wanted to hear a new type of record from her: more confident, bolder. He offered an Ecstatic Peace! release if he was allowed to produce. Samara
poached drummer Steve Shelley for her band, adding the missing backbeat to a swarm of overdubs. Thurston produced the mix sessions; lying sick on the
couch calling out for more and more elements to be louder until a wonderfully aerodynamic version of the songs flew forth.
And here is the result: ‘Future Slip’ is a worldly record, a record which offers ‘a taste of the new dimension’ but warns of ‘guru bummers’. To a sunny day it adds
the shadows which allow the perception of depth. On a rainy day it offers a selection of cakes. Anyone who does not dig this record deserves our pity, as they
know nothing about the joy or sadness of life.