Chuck Johnson - The Cinder Grove (Self Release)

WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE:

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WHAT WE SAY:

The pedal steel is a fine instrument for creating ambient music, & its use has certainly gained traction in the genre in recent times, as a few skilled players dip their toes into ambient waters. The new Chuck Johnson meditation on the nature of loss tempered by the ultimate resiliance of the human spirit is a fine showcase of the instrument's joys.

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WHAT YOUR EARS SAY:

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WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY:

The follow-up to Johnson’s acclaimed Balsams LP, The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar. This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider pallette 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.
  Credits:
All music composed by Chuck Johnson and published by Sruti Music (ASCAP)

Recorded and mixed by Chuck Johnson at Cirrus Oxide in Oakland, California
String ensemble conducted by Jason Hoopes and recorded by The Norman Conquest at Expression in Emeryville, California
Piano recorded by Sarah Davachi in Los Angeles, California
Mastered by Bo Kondren at Calyx Mastering in Berlin, Germany

Front cover “Geschenk der Seherin” by Johannes Schebler

Layout and design by Rob Carmichael, SEEN


Chuck Johnson | pedal steel guitar, synthesizers, Yamaha electronic organ, treatments
with:
Sarah Davachi | piano
Marielle V. Jakobsons | violin
Hilary Lewis | violin and viola
Crystal Pascucci | cello