Folk Noir: Spare and intimate recordings of hauntingly lyrical songs that feature bravura fingerpicking, killer melodic hooks and intense wordplay.

14 MP3 Songs in this album (74:27) !
Related styles: FOLK: Modern Folk, FOLK: Alternative Folk

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Details:
Jason Camlot is a Montreal songwriter and poet. His poetry collections include The Animal Library (2000), Attention All Typewriters (2005) and The Debaucher (2008). Musically speaking, Camlot played drums in the SF punk outfit The Tuning Knives, led by Robert McNiell (thereafter of The Softs, and now of The Country Teasers). He has collaborated with superb finger-style player and songwriter Kenny Smilovitch for years in the folk noir duo Letterbomb. He currently plays bass with the Montreal based Rawk Group Puggy Hammer, which released its debut record Rock Like Idiots in 2004. Camlotâs 4-Track distortion-pop recordings are available from iTunes and other places as the digital download, JC SPED: Affect.

Back in the mid-1990s, while oscillating between San Francisco and Montreal, Camlot released three legendary cassette albums in quick succession: O Glee (1994), Mr. Fedora (1995) and Letterbomb (with Kenny Smilovitch) (1996).

Two digital download releases via the Urban Myth Recordings CollectiveâO Glee and Mr. Fedoraârepresent a documentary compilation of this extended annus mirabilis of song writing and recording, featuring his first two acoustic records in their entirety, plus selections of unreleased studio recordings from this extremely creative period of medium-grade depression and impermanent exile.

Released in the throes of eighties overproduction and the midst of grunge, Camlot's intimate, opaquely confessional songs went unheralded. Recorded sparely, superficially "folk", yet filled with bravura fingerpicking, monstrous, angular hooks and intense wordplay that verges on incantation, where did Jason Camlot fit in? Eric Matthews was dabbling with orchestras. Elliot Smith was still playing grunge in Heatmiser. (Leonard Cohen? he was that old guy playing synth pop and dating that blonde twentysomething actress... you know, the guy Don Henley and Trisha Yearwood covered.)

Nonetheless, Camlot's tapes traveled by word of mouth through the Canadian indie-rock underground over the following decade, to the point where they had been traded and burned enough times that erstwhile fans Dan and Chris of the Urban Myth Recording Collective decided it was time to do something about it. They found Camlot in Montreal at his job teaching Victorian literature at Concordia University. Duly impressed by such punk-rock cred, UM asked him if they could digitally re-release these two cult recordings, with the addition of some âextrasâ that compliment the sparse originals. Camlot obliged, pulling a select number of full band and Letterbomb tracks out of a shoebox and fitting them in at the end of the original track lists. The UM dudes reconvened, redesigned the covers, pushed the project forward. Now that these two compilations are out, Urban Myth Recordings looks forward to releasing two more collections of Camlot's material that have been recorded but remain unmixed, as well as a proposed album of brand new material.

O Glee: The Original tape cover of O Glee was printed on cream colored card stock, and featured the same image of a sad child from Charles Darwinâs Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals that accompanies the digital reissue. The text to appear on the original tape cover for these recordings runs as follows: First fold/ All songs written and performed by Jason Camlot. Recorded Live to DAT at Sharkbite Studios, Oakland, CA on Sept 1st and 25th, 1994. Engineered by David Plank. Mastered by Bob Hunt. Second fold/ A black mournerâs stationary border outlines the following statement hidden within the folds of the tape cover: âKEEP PLEASURE HEREâ. The âfull bandâ versions of select songs at the end of the digital reissue were recorded and mixed by Goran Petrovic at LâOffice sound studio in Montreal, Quebec, October, 1995. The musicians who played on these songs are: Mitch Magnet (Keyboards and Hammond Organ), Goran Petrovic (Pedal Steel and Guitar), Andrew Rishikof (Drums), Harry Schner (Bass), Lorne Scodnick (Guitar).