Subscribe
now to receive all the new
music
Flower Room creates,
including this release
and 97 back-catalog releases,
delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android.
You’ll also get access to
subscriber-only
exclusives.
Learn more.
Limited Edition Cassette with Hand-Painted Labels and Autographed Cover
Cassette + Digital Album
Limited to 50! Home-dubbed music-grade Type I c30 in ivory-colored shell, with hand-painted labels and hand-stamped B-side. Double-sided full-color tip-on cover on clear polybox with autographed front, hand-numbered to 50. Pre-orders are open now, with tapes expected to begin shipping August 5th (we will update images as the tapes near completion).
Includes unlimited streaming of Full Service Station
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Full Service Station documents the first (and, to-date, only) public live solo guitar performance by Matt LaJoie following the release of his acclaimed debut LP The Center and the Fringe at the top of this calendar year. In a set captured live at Academy Records Annex in Brooklyn by noted taper and underground archivist Jesse DeRosa, LaJoie weaves bowed, fingerstyle, plucked, and strummed notes on the same instruments and live-looping setup used on Center & Fringe into all new tapestries of sound.
The opening title track begins with layers of harmonically rich bowed drone, and as individualized notes gradually color the space in freestyle strokes, a subtle arrangement coalesces around spontaneous motifs and the invisible meter created by each loop's return to the top. The motion of ecstatic dance is suggested by the playful and joyful rhythms that accumulate one note at a time, these foundations eventually slowed, reversed, or sped up to align to an all-new field of possibility every few minutes. On the B-side, "Return Trip" incorporates a distant memory of Center & Fringe's "Plane of Return" at its onset; like a mirage, the seemingly familiar notes and rhythmic patterns spread, smear, and fade as they approach peak sun-stroked clarity. Once perception of the sound disperses back into pure wave and field, new pioneering lead lines appear as a guide out of the teeming void just as the performance concludes.
LaJoie's previous live tape, The Fountain (fro-oo9), introduced listeners to his particular style of merging pure improvisation on guitar with the on-the-fly compositional / backing track assistance provided by live-looping; The Center and the Fringe and its companion tape Happy to Help furthered these experiments by presenting the process in higher definition and clearer resolution than ever before. Listeners pulled in by one or both iterations of this ever-shifting web of sound will delight that tape was rolling that February evening in Brooklyn, offering fresh documentation of a style unique amongst time's unfolding catalog of guitar-based improvisational music.
credits
released July 29, 2019
Matt LaJoie: 10-string acoustic guitar, 6-string electric guitar, loops.
Recorded live at Academy Records Annex (Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY), February 8, 2019.
Live recording by Jesse DeRosa; mixed by Matt LaJoie.
Photo of ML by Ash Brooks.
Special thanks to Jeff Conklin & Academy, Jesse DeRosa, Danny Arakaki, and Tom Malach.
Exploration & discoveries in improvisation & harmonization ☄ Tonal cosmology, virtual rurality, and hymns to the cosmos and the natural world, to heal and inspire a more harmonious You-We-All ☤ Welcome
Williams' music is narrative storytelling in instrumental form, a stunning achievement that stands alone in the solo guitar canon. A singular vision & style, and inspiration for each to likewise seek. Flower Room
Hunter's unique blend of harp, voice, field recordings & ambient electronics made Spells our favorite tape of 2020, and this new vinyl edition (with 2 top-tier vinyl-exclusive tracks) is perfection. Flower Room
One of our favorite contemporary artists crafts his ambient-jazz masterwork. Timeless piano melodies loop and brush up against complex and endlessly intriguing beats, with cosmic swaths of synth atop. Flower Room