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LP
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FTR 352LP
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"Second album by Western Mass's most exciting live band is now in hand, and it's a swirling web of dooziness. Recorded by Ted Lee at Fayre Lawn, the team of Mia Friedman and Andy Allen have created a masterpiece of strange familiarities. Using a large array of instruments -- banjo, gourd banjo, fiddle, guitar, tenor sax, clarinet, flute, drum machine, etc. -- the duo easily transcends any real or imaginary boundaries of what's possible to do with just four hands. The results are as amazing as they are hard to categorize. Listening to the album for the umpteenth time, brings to mind a wide variety of things: an album I have of a high school production of Lerner & Lowe's Brigadoon (1954); Virgil Thomson's 1954 recording of Four Saints in Three Acts, his collaboration with Gertrude Stein; Kronos Quartet's cover of Harry Partch's 'Barstow' from Howl U.S.A. (1996); Big Blood's recent work with Elliot Schwartz (2016); etcetera. There is an air of mid-20th century avant-garde romanticism hanging like a veil over this project. It probably has something to do with the concept of creating a bridge between vernacular culture and experimental performance (even if that performance is unconsciously wrought), but I'm too damn tuckered to get to the bottom of it right now. Suffice to say, All The Roots is a mighty devil of a record. It fulfills the promise of Hollow Deck's live show. And that is saying a pant-load and a half." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 300.
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LP
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FTR 239LP
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"The debut LP by this Western Mass duo is a masterpiece of fractured air. The two performers are Andy Allen (from the original line-up of Guerilla Toss, among many other places) and Mia Friedman (whose collaborations apart from this include Lichen and appearances with Lauri McNamara's Carbuncles). Previously issued as a cassette, Hobson's Choice is a blend of traditional and experimental approaches that alternately puts us in mind of several units inhabiting the landscape of Strange Maine over the last decade, and the animated '30s cartoons of Max Fleischer. And Hollow Deck have a unique way of quivering between their two main style poles guaranteed to put hair on anyone's chest. From its first song, the album is a bridge between beauty (as personified by Mia's singing voice) and odd instrumental work that moves from clutter to clack to clam in the space of a blink. A few of the tracks are so sweetly arranged -- rural voice and flute gliding above warm fields -- that it almost feels like insanity is on the wind when the musical proceedings turn dark and unruly. But, as in life, they always do eventually, if only for the nonce. Before you know it, the scene turns into a nursery room theatrical with mice in white gloves capering while the cat naps. Other gorgeous bits recall Joanne Robertson at her most elegiac, singing along to a broken record. Then flutes join the fun, as though representing a pack of wolves mourning the death of the moon. Hobson's Choice is filled with many other such seemingly contradictory juxtapositions. Letting them flow through your head will free you -- if only for a moment -- from the world around us, delivering you somewhere new before snatching you back to reality. Enjoy the trip." - Byron Coley, 2016
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