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Posts Tagged ‘folk’

I’m proud to announce (or I regret to inform you, depending on your musical tastes) that I have yet another album out.

Salon de la Guerre’s 36th album, No One Hears a Zen Busker, has arrived on the streaming services. For whatever reason, I’m enjoying an extremely prolific phase in my songwriting and composing career. I’ve released three albums in the last four months and I have two more dropping in the next few weeks.

I know it’s hard to keep track of, and I’m sorry if my curating skills aren’t the equal of my ability to keep churning music out as if by fire hose.

The latest set is (mostly) acoustic folk songs. I like composing on guitar, but I’ve had technical problems (including the death of my most expensive beloved microphone) that kept me from recording acoustic guitar properly for a while, which is why I haven’t released such an album since 2017, when I dropped Keep Your Slut Lamp Burning. Like that collection, this new one is about eccentric characters and folk heroes, both modern and classic. It includes Americana experiments (including a song inspired by Ambrose Bierce) and meditations on despair and joy. The usual Salon de la Guerre territory.

The album is now available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, Bandcamp and Pandora, among other places music is streamed. Unfortunately, I still do not offer physical CDs, which would be too expensive and make this little side endeavor of mine a bit too expensive to continue.

Even as I write this blog, I’m already thinking ahead to the release of my next album, which is coming out next Monday. That one is another detour into classical music and finds me continuing in my quest to play in the fields of Prokofiev. I’ll let you know when it arrives on the streaming services.

Until then, please enjoy a sample of No One Hears a Zen Busker. As always, the music was written, performed and produced by me, Eric Randolph Rasmussen, and it was recorded at my home studio in New York City in the early months of 2024. I also took the cover photo.

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The 26th album by Salon de la Guerre, Hugs for Mountains, is now available on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Pandora and other services where music is streamed or downloaded.

The album is a melding of electronica and folk music, gothic rock and New Wave, inspired by acts such as Four Tet, the Talking Heads, Lene Lovich, Gia Margaret, Public Image Limited and Throbbing Gristle. I’ve previously used aggressive sampling and noise in my albums, but generally limited that to experimental instrumental albums such as Liberty and Golem Vs. Duende. In Hugs for Mountains, I add lyrics and put these noises and samples in pop and folk music contexts. Some of the samples are of musical instruments (like my now returned rented saxophone), while others are developed from household items like notebooks and vacuum cleaners and my own breath.

I made this album concurrently with my next album, Digital Moon, which I hope to release next week. As always, the songs were written performed, produced and arranged by me, and I recorded them in my New York City home studio on GarageBand for iPhone.

Check out a sample of the new album at Bandcamp:

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