Two Foot Yard - Lugano 2009.03.16

Another fake cover from an imaginary label catalog.

You can find the first "issue" [Steve Lacy in wuppertal] on InconstantSol.

Two Foot Yard

is
Carla Kihlstedt (violin, voice, percussion),
Marika Hughes (cello, voice),
Shahzad Ismaily (drums, guitar).


Recorded at Studio 2/ RSI Lugano" (Switzerland)

March 16, 2009.

01 RTSI Radio Intro

02 Rootin For The Shy Librarian_Drizzle

03 Spinney

04 Unidentified Track

05 Unidentified Track

06 Untitled Instrumental

07 Unidentified Track

08 Crisis

09 Seven Houses

10 Unidentified Track

11 Unidentified Track.

12 Unidentified Track

13 Red-Rag & Pink Flag

14 Unidentified Track

15 Museum Of Tears.

16 50 Miles

17 Borrowed Arms

When Lucky gently invited me to post in this blog (about one month ago?) I had no great doubt about what would have been my first post: for sure it will be Carla Kihlstedt's "2 Foot Yard" radio date.

I've discovered Carla Kihlstedt in those same days and listened a lot to four dates of this astonishing trio (at least to my ears!): two radio broadcast from an european tour (the other is from Cologne) and two official recordings. Really dont' know well, and can't clearly explain, why I suddenly fell in love with 2FY's trio music. I discovered Fred Frith first, than the Tin Hat Trio and finally Carla Kihlstedt's 2FY.

I've never listened so much to rock, pop or electrical blues, never loved the timbrical, rhythmical and structural aspects of those musics. This seems to be, and is described as, a rock-pop song band. But for me it's true in the same way in wich we can describe Naked City (with Fred Frith again) as a rock band.

Highly original music, very "listeneable" and "easy", played by three master musicians; music that uses the external shape of pop-rock, blues and folk in a song form as a comfortable shied, but Luckily! is another thing so far away from those almost boring (at least to my ears, brain and feel) places.

What astonishes me is the wide musicality and open mind of the 2FY: as in Fred Frith music in any moment You feel like everything can happen in the next track or in the next second .

Three musicians that many times become six: Carla plays the violin and sings, Marika do the same with the cello and Shahzad plays guitar with arms and drums with legs. Everything happens with simplicity and naturally most important never as a technical dexterity demonstration but always to reach a clear musical end. Fred Frith, Leroy Jenkins, Steve Lacy work on song, european classical music, blues, folk, rock and art song this seems to me some of the musical sources of this fresh trio.

Enjoy!

Two Foot Yard from their website is

"1) a very small urban garden in which things grew organically, both feeding off of and defying their greater context.

2) a short-changed context

2 foot yard is a trio that explores the boundaries between art song and pop song, using distinct elements of both, formally and aesthetically. The instrumentation includes violin, cello voice and drums, which alternately evoke the intimacy and warmth of chamber music, and the raw and visceral expression of rock. 2 foot yard navigates through a social and aesthetic cross-section, creating a very personal vocabulary that references various musical genres, but comfortably avoids letting down anchor. 2fy is as likely to couch a text such as an e e cummings poem in the context of a pop song, as they are to sorround observant narratives with more esoteric or avant-garde compositions.