burst & bloom records

We are excited to announce two new releases- Hello Shark‘s album Break Arms, and Guy Capecelatro III‘s book Some Women.

Hello Shark is certainly one of our favorite bands right now, and we dare say that Break Arms is a tiny masterpiece. Lush and simple, hot and cold- at the same time!

Guy has been contributing his Some Women column to Portsmouth, NH’s The Wire for several years, and has compiled them for the first time in a pocket-sized paperback book. Taken in all together, it becomes sort of like a poem, and these women come to life through Capecelatro’s spartan prose.

Summer’s almost here, and we have lots of new releases on the way. Right now, you can order the debut EP by Boston’s Ruin / Renewal [CD or download] as well as Audrey Ryan‘s book The Need to Be Heard [paperback book or digital download].

Check back soon for a new book and album from Guy Capecelatro III, and a new album from Hello Shark, as well as the third installment in the Seasonal Disorder CD series- Summer.

Hot on the heels of our Seasonal Disorder: Winter compilation, we have released the second in the series, Seasonal Disorder: Spring.

Artists include: The Milkman’s Union (featuring Lady Lamb the Beekeeper), Cake on Cake, Tin Ceilings, Michael Holt, Mara Flynn, Lindsay Clark, Lina Tullgren, The Points North, Black Window Music, Eric Ott, Blake J. Seale, Jr., and the Fruitless Trees.

All songs are new and exclusive to this compilation. It is available now as an instant download, and on CD via mailorder.

Click here for more information.

A wonderful review of the Seasonal Disorder: Winter compilation in the Portland Press Herald…

Entrancing compilation travels a spectrum of sounds, feelings

By AIMSEL PONTI

In a word, wow. I feel as if I’ve just stepped off a sonic hovercraft that took me across the solar field, by Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and into an aural wormhole. Along the way, we stopped at an array of planets, each one home to a different artist or band playing alone on a black sandy beach while a subtle, whispery snow lightly falls.

Such is the trip that the “Seasonal Disorder Winter” took me on, and I hope your trip is just as scintillating. From low whistles to fragile vocals and soul-touching lyrics, an “I mean it” bass line and a spectrum of sounds and feelings in between, this compilation really is that good. No lie.

I bow to the people at Burst & Bloom Records in Portsmouth, N.H., for gracing my ears with a 16-song sojourn into an utterly entrancing place that starts with Winter Sons’ “Shadow of the Coming Days” and ends with South China’s “The Big Hill.”

At present, I am no less than obsessed with “Get the Horses Ready” by Jonx (Jon Elstrom, who has played in the bands Toast and Two-Ton Santa). It’s a song I listened to nine times in a row the other day. It makes me feel nine different emotions at once and, man alive, that’s what music is all about.

Craig Werth’s “River of Bone” has an ancient wisdom to it, and he has just the right voice to go with it: “There are those in silent sleeping beneath the stick and stone / There are those intent on reaping beside this river of bone.”

The band Torrez, with an eerie electric guitar contrasting with an acoustic one, along with female and male vocals, delivers with “The Winter & The Shame.” Novella’s contribution is “Sleeper Sister,” a subdued song that also merges acoustic and electric guitar. Lovely.

Dan Blakeslee’s song “Let’s Start Again” marks the CD with another stellar point of distinction: “Awaken with hope and forgiveness, surprise us with news that is good,” is his request. Emily Hope Price and her cello give us “Odiorne and the Sea,” an instrumental entry into the afterlife.

You can hear tracks from and purchase “Seasonal Disorder Winter” at burstandbloomrecords.com. Next up, the spring compilation. I can hardly wait for it.

_________________

The compilation is available to order here. Free streaming or $5 digital download here.

Burst & Bloom proudly presents:

February 2011

Seasonal Disorder: Winter

CD Compilation. 16 new and exclusive songs about winter by:

Jason Anderson, Dan Blakeslee, Tibia Clausa (Guy Capecelatro III & Marc McElroy), Ray Halliday & Jason Kleinberg, Jonx, Moons of Jupiter, Northern, Novella (formerly Western Homes), Ormolu, Emily Hope Price, Brian Michael Roff, South China, Testface, Torrez, Craig Werth, Winter Sons

Artwork by Michael Winters

Track information HERE.

All our album releases, including the CD companion to the All My Friends book, are available for download over at our bandcamp site. We’ve lowered the prices across the board to just $5 per album! There are even a couple digital-only releases, like Tiger Saw’s collection Ask Me Again and Hamlet Idiot’s The Ape in the Moon (which we are giving away for free, actually).

You can stream all the albums at the site for free, so check ‘em out, and download a few!

The Burst & bloom bandcamp site is here.

Hamlet Idiot‘s 2000 album The Ape in the Moon (several years in the making, and released posthumously) has been out-of-print for some time, and we are now offering it as a free download for a limited time.

The post-rock band formed in 1992 in Massachusetts, and this album features Gregory Moss, Dylan Metrano (Tiger Saw), Jacob Trussell (DJ C), Todd Horwath, and Sean Scanlon.

On The Ape in the Moon, Hamlet Idiot really surpassed anything they had done before, and it’s a shame that they never really got their due. We hope you’ll take a moment to stream and/or download the album via the link above.

FREE ART: TAKE ONETen Years of Free Art on the Streets of Newburyport, MA | Make Your Own Book

In the autumn of 2001, we decided to stage an unorthodox art show in our hometown of Newburyport, Massachusetts. The concept was simple: We asked all the artists (and some non-artists) that we knew to contribute fifty pieces of art to be given away anonymously in December. Some artists gave us fifty unique pieces, others made prints or photocopies. The artists gathered over pizza at the end of November and stamped “FREE ART” on over 1000 pieces of artwork. We made some sturdy boxes, and labeled them “FREE ART: TAKE ONE”, and filled them with the art. On December 1st, we hung the boxes up around downtown Newburyport in various stores and public places, where they were picked through and emptied out over the course of the holiday season. It felt great to be able to give away so much art at a time of year when there is such a focus on commercialism. Much of the art was unsigned, anonymous. There was no explanation of the show on the boxes, no websites for more information. The artists wouldn’t know who ended up with their art. The people who took the art wouldn’t know who made it. It was a pure act of creation and giving. The following year, we decided to stage the Free Art Show again. And again the next year. Now in it’s tenth year, we have seen little variance from the original concept. At one point, we lowered the number of pieces artists had to contribute from fifty to thirty, to try to encourage more people to participate. And over the years, we added more cities where the boxes would be hung. Portsmouth, NH; Portland, ME; Biddeford, ME; and Brooklyn, NY have all seen the spray-painted cardboard FREE ART boxes. Scores of artists have contributed. Many participate each year, and there are always some new faces. The idea is a simple one, and we’d like to encourage people all over the world to stage Free Art Shows in their communities. The first decade has been incredibly gratifying, and I hope it will continue on for many more years. This book collects an assortment of artwork from 2001 to 2009, presented anonymously, in the spirit of the Free Art Show.

Purchase via the Buy link above.

Tiger Saw’s Nightingales album has been released digitally. You can stream the entire album at Burst & Bloom’s bandcamp page, where you can also download it as 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.

Available from Burst & Bloom at our order page.

It’s also available for download through iTunes, emusic, and amazon.com.