Posted on: December 15, 2010 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

An exciting year for Gnome Life Records, 2010 saw the release of label operator Fletcher Tucker’s latest Bird By Snow full-length “Common Wealth” to much praise. 2011 promises to be even better with new releases from Bird By Snow, Psychic Hiking, Spencer Owen, Sean Smith & Johanna Borcert, The Range Of Light Wilderness, Aaron Sheppard, as well as a new Bird By Snow album on the horizon.

Magnet Magazine has the scoop on the latest Bird By snow, “Across The Water” from the naturalist, widescreen pop masterpiece Common Wealth. Also as a bonus, Bird By Snow is offering up a free digital 7″ called “After Life” which you can download here. These two songs are alternate universe versions of songs from “Songbread/Another Ocean”. Recorded on 8-track cassette at home in San Francisco.

Upcoming Shows

Jan 5 Bottom Of The Hill San Francisco, CA

Jan 31 Elbo Room San Francisco, CA

w/ Little Wings, The Range of Light and Wilderness

Also, if you missed it the first time around…make sure to check out Bird By Snow’s Ascension Sessions on IFC.

Northern California’s Bird By Snow hiked three miles up to a secluded wooded grove in Big Sur, taking a few instruments and a toy Japanese camera with them into the fog. They came to a big oak tree and crafted a uniquely percussive sculpture from fallen branches (along with some twine, home-made ceramic chimes and a cymbal), and raised it in the boughs of the oak. This became the rhythmic centerpiece of a transcendent live performance series which we have here for your contemplation.

Friend of the band, Noël Vietor, documented this ascension with the toy camera, which adds a kind of mystical charm all it’s own. Watch these Druids conjure music where there had been only whispers in the mist.

Bird By Snow are Fletcher Tucker, Spencer Owen, and Rob Little. They’re wearing shirts which were dyed by Vietor using plants harvested from the Big Sur trail.

“‘This voice paired with tip-toeing guitar lines and the soft hiss of empty space is basically what it feels like to hole up in a warm wood cabin for awhile. If you want to get nerdy, there are echoes of the way Phil Elverum sings from his throat-intimate and softly bubbling, but cleaner. Less cracks and more foggy smoothness.”
-Sam Hockley-Smith, The FADER

“one can hear everything from understated folk antecedents to fraught metal extremes to shadowed goth touches throughout its seven songs, but at no point is it simply one of those approaches, or any other one, for that matter.”
-Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

“This is music as natural as sunshine, rolling off his strings and keys like rain off a slick surface…9 out 10”
-Sean Caldwell, No Ripcord

“..dramatic vocals, widescreen pop, the naturalist movement, apocalyptic overtones, and general eccentricity.”
– Dusted Magazine

“Exploring personal and universal identities with an understated, yet sometimes quite grand grace and organically natural ease, almost like these songs sound like they just happened rather than being crafted and created.”
– Dream Magazine

BIRD BY SNOW
COMMON WEALTH
out now on Gnome Life Records

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