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Book
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UF 059BK
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"There are no obvious pathways of understanding into or through Christina Carter's For Want of Walls, a catalog of the unknowable more than a book of any easy categorization. Carter has been an active agent in independent music and art since the early '90s, and much like her work in other mediums, her writing follows no predictable template and upends even standard expectations of non-linear structures. The words arrive in segments and at various velocities, quickly shifting perspectives between narrators and timelines, moving from fathoms beneath murky waters to above ground in an undone world. For Want of Walls follows several previous collections of Carter's writing, but is her first book to include visual art. Watercolor paintings act as inversions and co-representations of the written word delivered in a different language, a rough-cut juxtaposition of bold, cut-flower colors. These images map out diagrams of remembered rooms, the floor plans and furnishings of various childhood homes, and forgotten but still grasped presences, all recollected outside of time like a barely held together, yet somehow still vibrant, vaseless bouquet. As Carter's ever-unraveling fragments emerge there are moments of blood, glass, divinity, reflection. Unwonted displays of beauty and waves of warm, generous confusion require an open curiosity. For Want of Walls asks that the reader becomes porous to its efflorescent currents."--Fred Thomas
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LP
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RS 093LP
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Masque Femine should be regarded as a total work -- much like a film, a ballet, a building, or, an altarpiece -- rather than as an album of individual songs. And, its fundamental subject should not be understood to be romantic love. Christina Carter was born in the bayou city of Houston, Texas in November of 1968, and co-founded the group Charalambides there in December of 1991. Ever since then, she has deeply mined her own vein of sound-as-music with voice, guitar (both electric and acoustic), piano, and keys. For the past several years, Christina has utilized extended improvisational guitar passages within and without song-medley structures; re-contextualized certain Charalambides songs within the spare single guitar/voice form that birthed much of the group's music; and recently, investigated "the song" as a thing unto itself, specifically concentrating on "the word" -- both in her own lyric writing and her interpretations of the work of other lyricists.
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2LP
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ROOT 036LP
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Restocked, last copies. "Double LP reissue of a 2005 CD-R released on Christina's own Many Breaths imprint. Six love songs comprised of elliptical bell like guitar phrases, barely there, sometimes even coaxing silence, set behind the extended vowel sounds of voice. Soft gentle performances here, like this whole record was cut very very late at night or in the early hours of the morning. An unhinged 'nowness' is pervasive in Christina's work, and Lace Heart is no exception. There is a very private feeling here, some kinda intimacy that just feels really rare. Lovers of past, present & future all collapse into one. Memories of smells, tastes & textures all channeled into wide open song. No one really does it like this. Three sides of music & and an etching of one of Christina's drawings on the fourth side. Red vinyl with maroon splatter. Edition of 500."
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CD
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KRANK 122CD
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"The latest album from the longtime Charalambides mainstay follows her Electrice album from late 2006 on Kranky as well as a split album with Pocahaunted from early in 2008. Christina Carter has a gift. In a world where most people shy away from the truth, from honesty in emotion, Christina has the strength to address those feelings head on through her music. Within the songs of Original Darkness, she confronts loneliness, self doubt, inadequacy and desire. She bares these emotions in a sometimes tender, sometimes forceful, sometimes pleading voice, a voice in which you can hear her vulnerability, her trepidation. Christina's words, and the mournful sound of them, stirs a melancholy that is supported and framed by her gently plucked guitar notes, notes that echo the sadness in the world she sings of, as well as the words she sings. These 10 new songs are effective at painting pictures, exposing the underbelly of what we all really think but most will not say, of what we all really feel but push away. With the addition of gentle bells and occasional keyboards, Christina reminds us of what it means to be honestly human."
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CD
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KRANK 103CD
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"Christina Carter approached her new solo album with the specific idea of recording all of the songs in the same key and using the same guitar tuning. While some artists would be hampered by such self-imposed constraints, Christina uses it to her advantage by exploring seemingly innumerable ways to twist and turn the same basic notes into new shapes, creating just as much a mood as a song cycle. With Electrice, Christina has created the most cohesive and fully realized version of her unique musical vision to date."
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CD
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KRANK 075CD
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"The material on Living Contact is made up solely of Christina Carter on acoustic guitar and occasional vocals. It was recorded on boombox and four track tape from 1994-98, the period between Charalambides' Union and Houston albums, with most of the material recorded in 1995 and 1996. Wholly Other originally released Living Contact as an edition of 100 CDRs in 2001 and the label's catalog describes the music as 'The primitive and spectral underpinnings of Charalambides rendered with mysterious simplicity'."
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