Unfortunately, messages will likely not be responded to.
On October 22, in celebration of Connors' 60th birthday, Five Cycles will be broadcast. This is duo with Raymond Jow (keyboards) and Connors solo (guitar/keyboards) broadcast 5 p.m. EST at www.wnyu.org and 89.1 FM in New York.

Out February 17, 2009 on Family Vineyard The Curse of Midnight Mary CD and 500 edition LP. In 1981 guitarist Connors took his tape recorder to the graveyard where the legendary Midnight Mary's grave lies in New Haven, Connecticut. The curse is: Anyone who gets caught in her graveyard past midnight will die the next day. But Connors, like a young fool, taped in that place, making this album. Lost and forgotten, a cassette of this music -- made at Evergreen Cemetery -- was found by chance in 2008. Recorded between Connors' eight volume Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Improvisations LP series and the folk albums he would make with Kath Bloom, these nine pieces meld those distinct, haunting styles. Connors, singing in a trance like moan, reforms the Mississippi Delta blues on acoustic guitar with flashes of melodic hooks and a percussive guitar style that erupts into boogie-woogie riffs and other world spirituals.
Out January 20, 2009 on Family Vineyard Two Nice Catholic Boys a CD by Loren Connors & Jim O'Rourke Together, they unravel slow motion ghost blues across three extended pieces that evolve from Connors' martian style to the thundering, feedback splattered lead grooves of O'Rourke. The spontaneous melodies shift from devastating, country road intimacy to hypnotic overamped rock. It's ferocious, epic, and utterly beautiful. This live CD is only the second duo release by these musical partners.
Out August 2008 on Corwood Glasgow Sunday 2005 is a CD by Jandek -- a live performance from October 2005 featuring Connors with Representative from Corwood on vocals and harmonica. The album also includes a piece, recorded the same day, featuring Alan Licht and Heather Leigh Murray without Connors. This is the second Jandek album to feature Connors.
To accompany guitarist Loren Connors (nee Mazzacane) is to discover a strange and forgotten America, then venture irreversibly beyond. Connors is frequently pegged as an avant bluesman, and the blues are never far from the surface of his art -- but what a shimmering surface it is! The brevity and lyricism of his improvisations bear the mark of haiku; the floating, expressionist tones reflect the influence of Mark Rothko; and as he conjures keening Celtic wails, Connors offers himself as medium to the ghosts of New York City Past.
With "Sails", his 2006 release from Table of the Elements, Connors enters the third decade of such intimate explorations. In the course of these two discs, we pass through saturated phrasings, slowly undulating drones, doldrumic introspection and squalls of white noise. The penultimate highlight is a duet with Connors' aesthetic compadre, the late, great John Fahey. It's an intuitive and seemingly predestined meeting of two enlightened fellow-travelers: wily Fahey as the Dr. Livingstone of raw Americana to Connors' indefatigable Stanley. For his own part, Connors can evoke more clarity and purity in a short cluster of notes than most of his shred-happy contemporaries can muster in a lifetime -- and with Fahey's passing, he may be justifiably considered this country's greatest living guitarist.
Ultimately, Loren Connors' path, while not for the timid, is one of unspeakable treasure: a journey to the heart of brightness; a quest to penetrate a Terra Incognita of the soul.
"Just cause it's timeless does not mean it can wait." -- Cadence
"[Connors] is an American original in much the same sense as John Fahey or Jandek, in that hes chosen a classically American form, in this case the blues, and in true pioneer spirit taken it off somewhere else, crossed it with other forms . . . and shaped it into a uniquely individual vision of the modern American myth . . . [Connors] has created a singularly expressive and unique musical vocabulary. In short, he still sounds like no one else." -- David Keenan, The Wire
"Connors trademarks . . . are consistently prominent and sublime, always inferring something that runs a little thicker than sound . . . It makes sense that the like-minded John Fahey even saluted Connors on his final album with a piece using, in part, the same wandering tones and atmosphere, showing that after the poetries and aesthetics of life are gone, after style and sense are gone, there is something much harder to deal with that innate, tangible void that Connors has spent his life tugging at draws ever near." -- Matt Wellins, Dusted
"Loren MazzaCane Connors isnt a cult hero for no reason. His music is awe-inspiring . . . a one-person gentle tornado, Connors can get deep into human feelings with a single guitar." -- Pop Matters
|