DANIEL LITTLETON: Nobody's Fault But Mine/Down by the Riverside

Daniel Littleton

Nobody's Fault But Mine/Down by the Riverside

© 2002 Daniel Littleton

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Textural melancholia

notes

Daniel Littleton – Nobody’s Fault But Mine/Down By The Riverside (2xCD)
Last Affair Records

Limited edition, letter pressed double CD, beautifully packaged by Star Shaped Press. ”Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, previously available only in Japan, is a 12 song full length “solo” album by Daniel Littleton, founding member of the band Ida. Littleton sings and plays harmonium, guitar, and piano. Most of the songs were recorded live, with few overdubs. The sparseness of the arrangements, even by Ida standards, make this a shockingly personal, intimate listening experience. This is an unusual singer songwriter album that will appeal to fans of Richard Thompson, Surf’s Up-era Brian Wilson, Incredible String Band, Marble Index-era Nico, Robert Wyatt, Judee Sill, field recordings from the Phillipines and the minimalist droneworks of composers like Charlemagne Palestine and Phil Niblock. The songs are as vulnerable and personal as any Littleton has ever recorded, navigating heavy emotional terrain in threadbare settings – melancholy backwards glance reflections, joyful and bittersweet lucid dreams over nimble guitar work and luminous respirating acoustic drones. “The Smallest Sound” a hymn-like song about childbirth, may be the most spiritual, devotional song Littleton has ever written. Features guest appearance by Elizabeth Mitchell and a recording from the 1980s of Littleton singing with his father, the late Michael Storey Littleton. Down By The Riverside, originally released in a limited edition of 50 in 2002, is a full length instrumental album, all instruments played by Daniel Littleton. A meditation on peace, it was recorded in his NYC apartment shortly after the events of September 11, 2001. This is an album of beautiful extended drones, noise, guitar improvisation, and bells. For fans of North Indian classical music, Don Cherry, PKD, John Fahey, and Terry Riley’s loop experiments in the 1960’s.


“Dan Littleton took the opportunity to surprise no one at all on Nobody's Fault but Mine with a collection of quiet, dreamy pop. I've seen this guy rock out, and hard at that, but instead Littleton simply steps up to the mic and delivers a set of haunting acoustic folk, all quiet strummed guitars, measured piano footfalls, organ drone, and thoughtful, restrained, yet raw vocals. Part Robert Wyatt, part Nick Drake basement tapes, and all love. Disc 2's Down by the Riverside is equally warm and hazy, but far more abstract, featuring a suite of 12 instrumental tracks that hover between drone and gently picked dreams.”
- Other Music

That singing as the songwriter, squeezes, focusing to nature becomes something which this work Elizabeth Mitchell and has that singing in 2 signboards the group who which, in Ida, makes that deep forest think the tasting which the deep singing mouth only him. Acoustic in dressing up, that it was complete reflecting the long carrier, the blotch it crosses individual sounding which praises the tranquility which is consistent even here the chest quietly…it is the album of the highest quality”
- Oda Crystal Room (map) Japan, translated by Google

The other new Ida-related release is Dan Littleton's Nobody's Fault but Mine. This is Littleton's only bona fide song-based solo outing, heretofore only available as an ultra-rare Japanese import. Anyone who has been frustrated with Littleton's domestic output, which has so far consisted entirely of "experimental" drone wanks, should rejoice for this beautiful collection of well-crafted, intensely fragile ballads. Also included is Down by the Riverside, an album of "experimental" drone wanks.
- Green Ideas blog..com

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