The Ivytree / Chris Smith

Split #17

The seventeenth 12” in our split series, The Ivytree v Chris Smith introduces two more artists new to FatCat, each mining their own particular, singular visions, yet complimenting one another neatly.

From San Francisco, The Ivytree is the solo project of Glenn Donaldson, who is a founder member of The Jewelled Antler Collective – which exists as both a label (specialising in beautifully-packaged, made-to-order CDR pressings) and a coterie of mainly-Californian avant folk / improvisation / psychedelic ensembles. Amongst these, Donaldson also operates under the guise of The Birdtree, as well as playing in groups like The Knit Separates, Thuja, The Blithe Sons and The Skygreen Leopards. Beyond a shifting, shared membership, what unites many of these outfits is an organic, intuitive approach to music making, as well as an interest in ritual and collage, and the spontaneity of environmental recording. Many of Donaldson’s releases have resulted from recordings made outdoors or in non-studio locations.

The Ivytree’s tracks on this split 12” continue on from the lovely recent album, Winged Leaves’, which was released by US label Catsup Plate in August 2004, as well as The Birdtree’s classic recording, ‘Caravans and Orchids’. The five beautiful songs gathered here are based around picked acoustic guitar, bowed bouzouki, organ drones, wind-chimes, subtly scattered percussion, location recordings, and Donaldson’s own sweet, highly distinctive falsetto voice. The collection’s central track, a beautifully meditative 9-minute long guitar / bouzouki raga (that slides into a recording of honey bees and tinkling wind-chime hits) is bookended by three short songs, one acoustic guitar instrumental. As with all of Donaldson’s ‘-Tree’ releases, there’s a bitter-sweet, distant sense of melancholy that permeates these songs, a truly fragile sense of beauty, as well as a depth and warmth lent by the recording locations.

FatCat stumbled upon the work of Australian guitarist Chris Smith during a trip to his home city of Melbourne in 2001. In 1998 Smith recorded the stunning ‘Cabin Fever’ album on Avalanche Express and two years later he released the follow-up, ‘Replacement’ on another Australian label, Death Valley. Whilst ‘Cabin Fever’ comprised of a series of short, focused tracks built from layers of drone guitar, radio-static, distant drums, humming melodica, and saw Smith working in a similar territory to that explored by artists like Flying Saucer Attack or Windy x%x% Carl in the mid - late ‘nineties, Smith’s work since then has seen him move towards a somewhat fiercer and increasingly expanded sound world. His trance-inducing, wall-of-guitar-noise constructions have become longer and more strung-out. Formed from dense, multi-layered guitar improvisations, these tracks are limned with all manner of continually shifting tones, noise bursts, bass rumble, clatter and scrape, and result in the creation of a dense tapestries of timbres and tones for the listener to explore and get lost in.

The five stunning tracks Smith recorded for this Split 12” are Smith’s first new compositions since ‘replacement’, and are the result of three years of correspondence with FatCat.