Convocation is the work of ambient composer Matt Borghi (www.mattborghi.com) and saxophonist, Michael Teager (www.michaelteager.com). Recorded as a series of improvisational structures in spring of 2012, this is the first recording that Borghi and Teager have done together after a half-decade of working together.

With Convocation, Borghi brings in spacious guitar textures to create a harmonic fabric for Teager to lay out his saxophone playing with subtlety and nuance. With a background in classical and jazz saxophone, Teager brings a wide palette of influences to the music. Listeners will hear aspects of Jan Garbarek, John Coltrane and Dave Liebman that’s juxtaposed over Borghi’s pastoral guitar sounds that have more of their timbral origins in the work of Claude Debussy or Ralph Vaughan-Williams than they do other contemporary ambient guitarists.

Convocation, as a whole, aims to create a deep and timbrally interesting listening experience while also bringing together an interesting musical pairing and improvisational process. Saxophone and ambient music have never sounded like this, and Borghi & Teager attribute this to their friendship, their approach to the work and their diverse musical interests.

Buy the hardcopy CD here now, or you can visit online retailers such as Amazon, iTunes, or eMusic to name just a few…

Direct link to podcast: http://www.ambientsoundbath.com

Amalaise: http://amalaise.bandcamp.com
Peter G. Brown: http://petergbrown.bandcamp.com
Jason Sloan: http://jasonsloan.bandcamp.com

slo.bor media is excited to announce two upcoming jason.sloan solo releases:
The Sine E.P. is now available as a digital only release. This E.P. contains the lead “single” and title track from the upcoming Fall of the Fifth Sun album plus two exclusive tracks from those recording sessions. The E.P.s closing 13 minute track.

You can purchase the Sine E.P. directly from the links below in addition to other good digital stores.
[BUY at jason.sloan.com] [iTunes] [eMusic] [Amazon]

August 30, 2012, the album Fall of the Fifth Sun, will be released and available in hard copy CD format or as a download at all the major digital outlets.

About FOTFS, Jason says:

“The majority of material on these recordings was conceived during the multiple live concerts I gave throughout 2011 and early 2012. These song sketches were reworked and then recorded in the studio over the past year.

“While still sonically similar to my last few albums, FOTFS & the Sine E.P. were created with only hardware. Going into these sessions, I wanted to create works that had an edge and felt fresh, but also an essence of nostalgia for the classic electronic music of the 70′s and 80′s, so hardware was the only way to go. Equipment used to create this album: Roland SH-101, Korg Poly-800, DSI Mopho, Roland Juno-60, Yamaha DX7, Korg Monotribes, Roland TR-606, Alesis Wedge, Boss CE-3, Steinberger GL and Fender Stratocaster guitars.”

Fall of the Fifth Sun has a 56 minute running time and will be packaged in a gatefold wallet style sleeve.

Track Listing:

Black Corona / Fall of the Fifth Sun / Ash and Snow / Pulsar / View from a Hill / Blue Kachina

16 minute album preview:
FALL_OF_THE_FIFTH_SUN_ALBUM_PREVIEW.mp3

Mouth of the River

Many who live below the Mason-Dixon line may refer to these new works as hainted; the new compositions feel as though there are souls from an older time occupying them, pulling on the strings and telling their tales. The EP opens up with an excerpt from the great Carl Sandburg and jettisons into a quilting of piano and acoustic guitar on Four Cords of Sourwood. Things pass between dark and light in almost an instant as Brown superimposes uplifting banjo runs with moody cello-like passages in pieces like Chancellorsville and The Hand of Man. We even hear a melody sung in the Shaker tradition overlaid with quiet musings of mandolin and guitar, though the EP never strays far away from its contemplative core.

Mouth of the River is able to find a musical home among neo-folk artists like Brian Harnetty, Sam Amidon and Frank Fairfield but just as easily melds into the rich pastoral music of La Monte Young, Marsen Jules and Brian McBride. The accessibility of this album resonates with Brown’s aim of finding the balance between American music’s deep past and the onward push upstream to find new sonic landscapes to settle.

Mouth of the River will be available worldwide on Friday June 8th in iTunes, eMusic, Amazon and all good digital music retailers.

- Four Cords of Sourwood [Full track preview]
Four Cords of Sourwood

Track Listing:
1. I am at Sea – 1’13″
2. Four Cords of Sourwood – 3’26″
3. The Hand of Man – 4’26″
4. Chancellorsville – 3’18″
5. The Protecting Chain – 3’29″
6. Hiram’s Lament – 3’47″

The first 12 minutes of STATIC are layered with live processed pipe organ and cell phone feedback giving way to a wall of beautiful shoegaze style guitar drone.

STATIC [thelema.dawning] will be available worldwide in iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, Rhapsody, Rdio & other good digital music stores and services on June 15, 2012 in addition to the Slo.Bor Media website store.

A collage of texture, atmosphere, field recordings, live instruments and vocals, the Amalaise sound can be described as a complex melding of the spacier side of Cocteau Twins with the experimental nature of Grouper or cindyTalk.

<<BUY THE CD>>

Track Listing:
1. Black Letters
2. Like A Barn Dead Horse
3. Body Ladder
4. Piscine
5. What The Living Do
6. Ancient Astronauts
7. Twinning Pools
8. Crystallization

Body Ladder [excerpt]
body_clip.mp3
Piscine [excerpt]
piscine_clip.mp3
What The Living Do [excerpt]
living_do.mp3
Ancient Astronauts [excerpt]
ancient.mp3
Twinning Pools [full track]
twinning_clip.mp3

We’ve never lost money on a release, though admittedly we’ve come close. This was especially true when we were doing hard copy releases. We don’t do that much anymore, unless we take them out for live shows. Mostly our music is available for digital download. We also have a variety of collectable, handmade editions that we did in the early days. Those are mostly gone now, and we’re always pleased when we see one of them on eBay fetching hundreds of dollars.

We didn’t have much of a business plan for Slobor when we started. We don’t have much of a business plan now. We make music and release it. We’ve found cheaper and cheaper ways to do these releases. We do our own design, our own graphics, our own packaging, our own Web development, our own mastering, our own engineering and our own promotion… Pretty much everything we do, we do ourselves. This the model that we took from labels like Dischord Records in Washington D.C., and bands like Fugazi, as well as labels like Chicago’s Touch and Go (by way of East Lansing, MI), or Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe Records. Punk rock taught us how to be DIY.

When we started the label it was out of necessity. We couldn’t get labels to take an interest in our work and our vision, so we joined forces. Both Jason and I have worked with many labels since then and even some before, but the right emphasis wasn’t put on the music or the art of making and presenting music, so we saw no real option: We had to do it ourselves.

We have a rich following, which always surprises me, not because I don’t think the work is good enough; I know it is, because we put our all into it. It’s surprising because our music is obscure, non-mainstream (or even close) listening music that rewards attentive listening. As global culture requires more and more instant gratification, our music couldn’t be further from that realm. It’s slow, and slowly evolving, like a fine wine, in that patience is rewarded.

The world is changing. Music business is changing. Expectations for the distribution, sale and experience of music is changing. We don’t know where it’s going and we don’t know how we’ll be getting our music to ears tomorrow, or in another ten years, but we will be. Our vision is as clear now as it was then: Create, distribute and promote music, artists and works of art that move us and might otherwise be neglected.

- Matt Borghi

Free Download

Sadayatana_Live.mp3
Set list:
Blue Star- 19’38″ -  ElevenEleven- 24’07″ -  The Fifth World- 15’19″

Work on their debut studio album will be completed early fall with a release towards winter 2011.