Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Dorothy Carter - Waillee Waillee (Celeste,1978)



I am not a piece of misanthropic record collecting scum. As much as I enjoy envisioning an alternative reality where my floorboards creek beneath the weight of 10,000 pieces of a moving man's worst nightmare, the truth is I am a man of modest means and limited square footage. Having said that, I treasure and worship my LP army and try to draft new members into the ranks as often as possible. Like many other music fanatics with questionable priorities who live in large cities, I belong to one of the most detested and deplorable sub-cultures known to modern man: Record store employees. Cursed with an insatiable hunger for jams of all varieties and a convoluted inferiority complex that develops during a most-likely sexless high school experience, these self appointed bastions of cultural import constitute the majority of my social network for better or worse. Relationships with fellow pushers follow a very familiar arc; beginning with the age-old dance of oneupmanship and eventually plateauing with a spirit of reluctant camaraderie and, for those not too far gone, friendship. If it wasn't for the adversarial nature between the members of this geek tribe, this blog and countless others wouldn't exist and I might have a girlfriend. Let this be a warning to fledgling collectors of the obsolete, original pressings of SBB records won't get you laid.

So, in keeping with the unwritten code of mutually assured destruction between record fiends, I am able to share with you a sweet slice of private press psych folk weirdness from 1978. On loan from the amazingly curated collection of Tropicalia In Furs Dorothy Carter's Waillee Waillee LP on Celeste Records is a startlingly beautiful and weird collection of traditional folk songs and blissed out drones . Carter draws heavily from American and Celtic traditions and utilizes an interesting array of stringed instruments including hammered dulcimer, cello, tamboura, piano, and flute to craft ethereal hymns to nature. The LP's lysergic qualities stem from the confluence of the hypnotic arrangements and Carter's perfectly hazy vocals rather than cheap studio trickery. The record is perfectly sequenced, balancing the haunting narrative pieces and the wood smoked Terry Riley by way of Appalachia instrumentals.

Note: A cursory search resulted in one result of Waillee Waillee being posted in the comments section of another blog with subsequent comments citing the source as one untracked mp3. This is a fresh rip of my own at 320kbps and individually tracked.

Dorothy Carter - Waillee Waillee (Celeste,1978)

1.The Squirrel Is A Funny Thing...
2.Dulcimer Medley- Robin M'aime
3.Along The River
4.Summer Rhapsody
5.Waillee,Waillee
6.Celtic Medley
7.Autumn Song
8.Tree Of Life

Enjoy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh oh, I think I have not only this but also (gulp) an SBB record somewhere in the vinyl vault (in the basement). Oh well, reproduction is overrated.

Anyway, thanks for this - now I don't have to go down there!

carolyn said...

This is so beautiful, haunting, and aurally satisfying. Thank you a million times.

Max said...

Thanks. A great record and a fine upgrade of the single track version that's out there.

Unknown said...

Amazing - thanks brah.