Vin Du Select Qualitite is a label that began with a concentrated focus on presenting instrumental solo acoustic guitar music by artists that expanded on the instrument?s deep roots in blues and folk music. The label has expanded to include records featuring a wider array of instrumentation and arrangements.
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viewing 1 To 23 of 23 items
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VDSQ 028LP
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On Transgression!!!, Donald Miller, guitar icon known for destroying worlds in the great Borbetomagus, takes the listener on an unexpected journey through the 12-string acoustic guitar. Utilizing his occult kinetic picking style, Miller reveals undiscovered universes with nothing but a slide and a spell to guide you. Playing a blues that bristles against structure while transmitting ineffable mastery, Transgression!!! is a modern guitar album like no other. Recorded in his current city, New Orleans, the album is the first to feature Miller playing in a more traditional style than either his group work or prior solo releases. For an artist known for exploring fantastic depths of the deepest abstractions, Transgression!!! is a mystifying journey toward structure that glows with the musician's signature intent.
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VDSQ 027LP
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The follow-up to Chuck Johnson's acclaimed Balsams LP (VDSQ 021LP), The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar. This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider palette of sounds, adding strings and piano, to dive deeper into the sound bath of Johnson's meditative music. The Cinder Grove is a profound, affecting statement on the nature of loss and irreplaceability as well as a major addition to the canon of Johnson's work. It's a suite of requiems for lost places. Many of the spaces that once fostered affordable living and creative work now only exist in sonic memory, like the echoes of ghosts. Like much of the California landscape in recent years, some of these spaces having succumbed to fire. Others, to the equally inexorable forces of gentrification. While his 2017 LP Balsams was intended to provide the listener with a space for respite and calm -- even healing -- The Cinder Grove seeks to remember what has been lost while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit and the natural world. In making The Cinder Grove, Johnson dug through archival recordings from Oakland DIY performance spaces to digitally extract their reverb and echo qualities. He then applied these effects -- as well as the digitally modeled reverberation of a redwood forest -- to the tracks on The Cinder Grove, allowing the pieces to bask in the lush virtual spaces, and in the process realized that these sonic re-constructions can only ever be approximations. We try to make spaces what we want them to be, whether in memory or in the material present.
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VDSQ 029LP
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A dazzling display of 12-string melodicism, Arc Minutes is the second full-length LP from once New Englander, now Tokyo-based, instrumentalist Rob Noyes. If one had to pin an influence from the holy trinity, rather than the existential drift of Fahey or the raga-tinged interpretations of Robbie Basho, Noyes excels at Leo Kottke-style dynamics playing huge, bright runs within compact arrangements that explode with exuberance. Since his debut, Noyes has matured with an intense focus and here delivers a concise, powerful collection of acoustic virtuosity, further cementing his status among the most revered young players to emerge from the modern solo guitar set.
"I've strayed from double thumb type fingerpicking and a little more towards unusual rhythmic patterns and tunings that are unique to the 12-string," says Noyes. "There are general musical ideas I tend to focus on when writing, like dynamics, rhythm, how the texture shifts/develops, that were probably somewhat noticeable on the first record that I think are much more in the forefront this time. I've become a lot more comfortable playing over the past couple of years, so I feel I can play odd meter/polyrhythm type stuff with a lot more ease. It's taken some time for my playing to catch up to my writing, so I think this new record is a much clearer statement musically." These developments are front and center as Arc Minutes flows with a beguiling dexterity. While there are plenty of forceful displays of guitar picking, the album is punctuated by lovely ballads such as "Dwelling" and "And How" to show the gentler side of Noyes's playing. But these moments of respite only highlight the record's assertiveness. Noyes's easygoing mannerisms offstage belie a fierce command of finger-picking and composition that result in an album that hits immediately and rings resoundingly. Injecting a fresh spirit into classic forms, Arc Minutes is an essential addition to the VDSQ catalog, a new peak.
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VDSQ 024LP
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End of the Night was conceived based around a simple, yet extremely emotionally resonant concept. Late one evening the musician and myself were listening to records at home. After many hours it got to the point where everything became completely still, the silence permeating the walls, reverberating. We agreed to listen to one more record, but what would it be? What music could answer that existential quandary of the perfect last record of the night at home? Several years passed before the execution of the concept could take place but Chris Brokaw was collecting notes in the back of his mind the entire time. I suggested collaborators like Greg Kelley (on Chet Baker style trumpet, knowing Brokaw's strong affinity for that player) and Samara Lubelski (whom he played with briefly in Thurston Moore and the New Wave Bandits). Bringing in guests such as Lori Goldston, David Michael Curry, Luther Gray, Jonah Sacks, and Timo Shanko, each track has its own unique combination of small group formations (duos, trios, quartets) very much like jazz, both in instrumentation and mood, if not style or standards. While Brokaw himself is a brilliantly narrative guitarist, known for taking collaborative projects he's involved with to new heights, rarely has he opened his solo work to the same collaborative spaces as with his group projects. The result is a multi-hued, jazz-tinged instrumental record with a melancholy resolve and a deep blue/purple filter. Very much a product of his song writing and playing, End of the Night's guests allow the guitarist to show his interplay and prowess in a variety of settings rooted around a common theme. The album art was done by Hollywood legend Sandy Dvore (Buffalo Springfield, The Cake, Partridge Family), who composed the drawing after hearing the album in full, directly inspired by the music, adding a visual element similar to the stylistic innovations of David Stone Martin.
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VDSQ 026LP
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Christmas restock! Vin Du Select Qualitite's resident mystic Anthony Pasquarosa conjures up the holiday spirits with an alchemically enchanted collection of Christmas classics. Utilizing his unique 12-string acoustic guitar sensibilities, Pasquarosa's versions of all-time favorites such as "Frosty the Snowman" and "White Christmas" take on an added dimension and shine, a frosted winter glow that sets the mood for warmly introspective holiday moments. Throughout the record, crackling fireplace sounds run alongside the tracks to provide further ambiance and seasonal merriment. Raise a cup of eggnog with Magic and Warmth at Christmastime.
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VDSQ 025LP
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Mark McGuire takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey through a winter wonderland with his soulful take on holiday favorites. From timeless classics like "Joy to the World" to a gorgeous rendition of Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here", McGuire thrillingly updates these arrangements with his signature psychedelic guitar work. Here, he employs a wide spectrum of sounds and instruments to bring new ideas to these beloved chestnuts. Brimming with joy and festive cheer, Do You Hear What I Hear? is a modern holiday record for all 21st century listeners.
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VDSQ 022LP
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2018 release. Awash in color and texture, Arian Shafiee's debut album, A Scarlet Fail, brings to light a guitarist whose sound and mastery are in full bloom. Best known for his work in the East Coast dance/punk group Guerilla Toss, Shafiee has spent years warping the idea of what a guitar can sound like. In a group setting, Shafiee does what's best for the composition, often blending seamlessly into the electronics and rhythmic grooves of his peers. A Scarlet Fail gives him a revelatory solo spotlight in a series of new electric and acoustic compositions. Inspired by visual elements of Western mysticism, Arian's playing glows like light through stained glass. With a deluxe die cut sleeve designed by Robert Beatty, Arian Shafiee's solo debut is a gem of 21st ventury guitar artistry, one based not on the precepts of American Primitive but rather on a more fully realized world view of contemporary guitar. By using unconventional tunings and techniques atypical to the acoustic guitar, the music on this album finds itself in constant flux. While Arian's style is hard to pin down, each piece exists in its own expansive harmonic world, unfurling and ever moving. Equally dynamic in terms of technical skill and emotive resonance, tracks such as "Oxy Blonde" and "Muted Heather" glisten, with an every-note-in-the-right-place perfection. The melodies linger, sometimes hauntingly in the spaces between notes, resulting in a solo guitar album whose sound reverberates long after the needle stops.
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VDSQ 023LP
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2018 release. Wendy Eisenberg is an extraordinary guitarist dedicated to the completely unconstrained exploration of music, language and time. Her work has taken her from conservatory to DIY space to concert hall, from performing improvised music and punk-metal to writing the quietest of songs. On Its Shape is Your Touch, Eisenberg turns her gaze to the guitar in its most absolute, essential form. Having traversed musical genres as she has, the intricate improvisations she weaves on this record have as much to do with the vast history and musical conventions that she chooses to leave out as the sounds she chooses to play. In the process Eisenberg invents a vibrant, fiercely unique language all her own. The artist in her own words: "The title Its Shape is Your Touch, from the final line the Richard Brautigan poem 'Here is something beautiful,' is one-half of the thesis of this record. The other, the absent antithesis, comes from the William Gaddis novel The Recognitions: 'you can change a line without touching it.' The shape of the guitar is the context for the sounds it makes; your touch activates this machine, alters, creates and transforms its possibilities. The shape is created and outlined by the touch, but it contains absence, undefined space. In my music, the lines change with and without physical touch: my touch creates the sound, but those sounds expand, contract, rotate, and dance as I re-establish and constantly evolve the contexts and boundaries of this world. This record has to do with absence, the spaces and movements implied by the lines of a sketch and the other worlds that choice of representation chooses to ignore. I want to let linearity be not a crutch but a device for intelligent travel through musical space. I like to think of these recordings as a gentle exorcism. Recorded in a year of significant, deep loss, it is hard for me not to hear this record as a kind of metamorphosis, a blood-letting, a culling and casting of musical and personal values. This music is reflection on loss and implication: a bluessless blues."
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VDSQ 020LP
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2017 release. Anthony Pasquarosa focuses the third eye back to 1910 to conjure a lysergic spaghetti Western experience. Expect to be transported to another realm where gunshots, galloping horses and psychedelic gunslingers mark the terrain. Pasquarosa reveals himself to be a master stylist and his third full length for VDSQ shows the widescreen breadth of his cinematic vision. Abbandonato Da Dio Nazione is expansively packaged with hand drawn artwork from the guitarist himself. Western's have never sounded like this.
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VDSQ 021LP
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2020 repress. Chuck Johnson's pedal steel guitar debut delivers a group of pieces for ambient meditation. Recorded in a single two-week session during late 2015, and subsequently arranged/constructed/treated in the studio in spring of 2016, Balsams is awash in layers of tonal perfection. The album constantly evolves while maintaining a unified approach across both sides. Balsams is a record that lives outside genre and time, one that continues to develop with each successive deep listen. A unique expansion in the VDSQ catalog, Balsams is an album created in the hopes of providing solace and regenerative energies for many years to come.
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VDSQ 019LP
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2017 release. Mark McGuire reminds you why he is among the most beloved guitarists of our new age. McGuire returns to VDSQ with a beautiful album of fractal introspection, a succinct collection of deeply melodic and emotive themes. Ideas Of Beginnings a direct statement of modern guitar, running the gamut from brightly focused acoustic compositions to late night electric vapor trails. Ideas Of Beginnings is another highlight from this iconic 21st century guitarist.
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VDSQ 018LP
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2016 release. A widescreen, cinematic vision for acoustic guitar composition from this classically-trained Icelandic artist, Kristin Thora Haraldsdottir. From minimal tone poems to densely melodic ballads, VDSQ Solo Acoustic Volume 14 presents a deeply personal approach to modern guitar that takes us on a journey of unexpected beauty.
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VDSQ 015LP
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2016 release. Although not as well-known as his peers (Roy Harper, John Marytn, and Bert Jansch), the name Michael Chapman is an important one in the linage of English folk rock guitarists and singer/songwriters of the late '60s/early '70s. For those unfamiliar with Chapman's work, Roy Harper might be his closest musical cousin (and both artists were signed to EMI's seminal stoner record label Harvest -- also home to Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett). Like other Harvest artists, Chapman's music contains a slightly drugged out feel, sublime guitar playing and intense lyrics. The godfather of alternative guitar returns with an all-instrumental album, in tribute to his influences and contemporaries. Summoning the spirits of some of the greatest guitarists of all time, Chapman proves again that he stands among them.
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VDSQ 016LP
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"Combining an elemental Appalachian spirit with a modern compositional approach, VDSQ Solo Acoustic Volume 12 serves as the vinyl debut for Sarah Louise, whose deeply ornate and engaging playing adds rich new colors to the palate of contemporary guitar."
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VDSQ 017LP
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2016 release. Rarely has a guitarist emerged with as distinctive and singular a voice as Tashi Dorji has with this series of nylon-string improvisations. Recorded in the U.S. and Bhutan, Solo Acoustic Volume 13 stands as a defining document of a great 21st century guitarist.
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VDSQ 012LP
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2015 release. Minimal acoustic melodicism from this NYC mainstay. Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who's who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham).
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VDSQ 014LP
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2015 release. Transcendental acoustic guitar mysticism from the VDSQ shaman of Western MA. Anthony Pasquarosa is an artist and musician whose need to create is like a never-ending search. He shouts at the audience in HC/punk bands, pays tribute to early eighties electro punk and late sixties psych, plays old time music and is an excellent player of all stringed instruments.
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VDSQ 013EP
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2015 release. Four tracks of instrumental acoustic guitar from the master songwriter. Silkscreened sleeve.
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VDSQ 011LP
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2014 release. Among the more revelatory contemporary guitarists, Matthew Mullane's album is a further progression in terms of technique, composition and performance. With a deeply personal signature style, fans have been anxiously awaiting his return to recording after sharing stages with artists like Bill Orcutt, Steve Gunn, William Tyler, Glenn Jones, Mark McGuire and many others. "The titular interest in Huts is an outgrowth of my thoughts on solo instrument playing and its relationship to the conflicted spatial and social impacts of separation, of the 'one' with the 'whole.' I came to this (after many years of playing 'guitar soli' with little conceptual undergirding) in reading so-called 'hermit' poetry alongside more recent theories of huts, capsules, bubbles and a plethora of other 'single occupancy' spaces. Living and playing guitar in variously isolated modes, I was attracted to the conflicts of productive separation and incorporated them into my playing. The idea has followed me and has inflected much of my recorded output. This new album, Hut Variations, is the result of four years worth of composition and recording. Each piece written and recorded in a different location, a different 'hut.'' --Matthew Mullane
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VDSQ 009LP
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"A dazzling debut from Bay Area guitarist Aaron Sheppard whose virtuoso fi¬nger-picked six string attack is stunning in both its precision and melodicism. Sheppard's album is a bold introduction to a remarkable new talent in the world of acoustic guitar."
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VDSQ 008LP
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2014 release. Solo acoustic recordings from the master guitarist, Sir Richard Bishop returns to familiar themes and introduces new ideas simultaneously on this tour de force performance of his singular style.
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VDSQ 006LP
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"Four string minimal symphonies for the grey side of America. Each note perfectly placed for maximum solitude. Karpinski offers a starkly melodic album of nighttime instrumentals." Last copies, deleted release.
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VDSQ 003LP
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2014 restock, released 2010. "12-String arrangements from a true master of the instrument, Brokaw shows a range from waltzes and ballads to experiments and rhythms. Member of Codeine, The NewYear, Come, Thurston Moore and the NewWave Bandits and many more ensembles."
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