Jeremy Barnes | |
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Background information | |
Born | Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States | September 18, 1976
Origin | Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA |
Genres | |
Occupation(s) | Accordionist, musician |
Instrument(s) | Accordion, drums, piano, santur, davul |
Years active | 1996–present |
Labels | The Leaf Label, L.M. Duplication |
Jeremy Barnes (born September 18, 1976) is an American musician. He plays accordion, percussion and other instruments. He has been a member of the bands Neutral Milk Hotel, Bablicon, Beirut, and A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and is a co-creator of the record label L.M. Duplication. Influences on his work include music from Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Caucasus.
Barnes was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of a local businessman. In 1995 he moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University but left his studies in January 1996, aged 19. [1] He joined Neutral Milk Hotel, which was a part of the Athens, Georgia-based Elephant 6 music collective. Neutral Milk Hotel disbanded in 1998 and Barnes spent time traveling in Europe and working as a postman. [2] He also played with Broadcast, The Gerbils and Bablicon.
Barnes cites his initial introduction to Eastern European music as having been in 1999 while on tour. After being introduced to Bulgarian music, he lived in a predominantly Ukrainian Chicago neighborhood and developed an interest in Romanian music. [3]
"I was kind of at a dead end in what I was listening to, and it just opened up a whole new world for me," he said in a 2011 interview with Noise Narcs. "That was in 1999. For a while it affected the way I looked at my music, but I was still playing drums in bands, and it didn’t seem like something I should pursue. You go through these fads or trends as a listener, where you’re really into something for a month and then it changes. But with this music, it’s been now twelve years or more, and it gradually seeped into everything that I do." [3]
In 2001 he formed A Hawk and a Hacksaw, [4] in France. In 2005 he met Heather Trost, who performs with him in A Hawk and A Hacksaw. Both Barnes and Trost contributed to the debut album by Beirut, Gulag Orkestar.
A Hawk and A Hacksaw's recording and touring line-up over the years has included Hungarian, Romanian, and English musicians, notably Fanfare Cioclaria, Ferenc Kovacs, Balász Unger, Chris Hladowski, and Kalman Balogh. One recent touring iteration included Chicagoans Samuel Johnson, who played trumpet, and George Lawler on the doumbek.
Barnes and Trost are married and live in Albuquerque. [5] They created the label L.M. Duplication to release their own recordings as well as music by other folk-related groups. Barnes has said he intends to release contemporary music as well as earlier music that is no longer available. They have released home recordings by John Jacob Niles, an album of Turkish wedding music by Cüneyt Sepetçi and Orchestra Dolapdere, and a compilation of music from the Caucasus Mountains, called Mountains of Tongues. [3]
Barnes and Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich released duo album called The Coral Casino, under the moniker Dieterich & Barnes in 2016. In the same year, Barnes released a collection of solo recordings, called Summer '16.
In Neutral Milk Hotel, Barnes played a four-piece C&C drum kit (24-inch bass drum) Paiste Giant Beat and Istanbul Agop Cymbals, and a Wurlitzer MLM organ. In A Hawk and A Hacksaw, he plays vintage Da Vinci, Dallape and Weltmeister Supita Accordions and the Iranian santur.
The Elephant 6 Recording Company is a loosely defined musical collective from the United States. Notable bands associated with the collective include The Apples in Stereo, Beulah, Circulatory System, Elf Power, The Minders, Neutral Milk Hotel, of Montreal, and The Olivia Tremor Control. Although bands in Elephant 6 explore many different genres, they have a shared interest in psychedelic pop of the 1960s, with particular influence from bands such as the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Zombies. Their music sometimes features intentionally low fidelity production and experimental recording techniques.
Neutral Milk Hotel was an American band formed by Jeff Mangum in Ruston, Louisiana, in 1989. They were active until 1998, and then from 2013 to 2015. The band's music featured a deliberately low-quality sound, influenced by indie rock and psychedelic folk. Mangum wrote surreal and opaque lyrics that covered a wide range of topics, including love, spirituality, nostalgia, sex, and loneliness. He and the other band members played a variety of instruments, including non-traditional instruments like the singing saw and uilleann pipes.
Jeffrey Nye Mangum is an American singer, songwriter, and musician who gained prominence as the founder, songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of Neutral Milk Hotel, as well for his co-founding of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Mangum is characterized for his complex, lyrically dense songwriting, exemplified on the critically lauded album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, as well as for his public image as a recluse associated with his extended periods of musical inactivity and minimal press interaction. An article published in Slate described Mangum as the "Salinger of Indie Rock." In 2023, Jeff Mangum received a Grammy award nomination for "Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package".
Julian Koster is an American multidisciplinary artist. As a musician, he is a member of the Elephant 6 Collective, the leader of The Music Tapes, and a member of Neutral Milk Hotel. He is known for writing, directing, and acting in audio fiction The Orbiting Human Circus , and for performing with the theatrical troupe of the same name. He is also known for his heavy use of the musical saw in recordings, even releasing The Singing Saw at Christmastime, his only solo album released under his own name, in 2008.
The Gerbils were an American indie rock band that formed in Athens, Georgia, United States, in 1998. Part of the Elephant Six Collective, the band released two albums and toured nationwide during their tenure.
Bablicon was an Elephant 6-related free-jazz band consisting of members of Neutral Milk Hotel and The Gerbils.
A Hawk and a Hacksaw is an American folk duo from Albuquerque, New Mexico, currently signed to L.M. Duplication. The band consists of accordionist Jeremy Barnes, who was previously the drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon, and violinist Heather Trost. The music is inspired by Eastern European, Turkish and Balkan traditions, and is mostly instrumental. They have released six albums and have toured internationally. The first four albums and an EP were released on The Leaf Label and afterwards on their own label L. M. Duplication.
"Everything Is" was the first recording mass-released by Neutral Milk Hotel, at that point still largely an outlet for the songwriting of Jeff Mangum instead of a fully formed band. The recording was originally the second release on the fledgling Seattle label Cher Doll Records in 1993, in the form of a 7", with "Everything Is" as the A side, and "Snow Song Pt. 1" as the B side. The first 50 7"s pressed also featured different artwork, with each sleeve being personally xeroxed by Mangum.
The discography of Neutral Milk Hotel, a Ruston, Louisiana-based indie rock group, consists of two studio albums, two singles, two extended plays, two compilation albums, and three demos.
Calvin, Don't Jump! started as the solo recording project of J. Kirk Pleasant, a musician with extensive connections to the Elephant 6 Collective. Before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he contributed to releases from bands like the Olivia Tremor Control, Black Swan Network, and Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't. His own albums have featured contributions from musicians like Scott Spillane, Jeremy Barnes, John D'Azzo, as well as Peter Erchick, Eric Harris, and John Fernandes.
Darkness at Noon is the second studio album by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, released in 2005 on The Leaf Label.
The Way the Wind Blows is the third studio album by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, released in 2006 on The Leaf Label.
Délivrance is the fourth full-length studio album by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, released in 2009 on The Leaf Label.
Heather Trost is an American violinist and singer.
Cervantine is A Hawk and a Hacksaw's fifth studio album, and the first to be released on the new label, L.M. Dupli-cation. The album's sound stands out from previous recordings, drawing a stronger influence from Greek Romani music, and the mariachi that had surrounded the group in New Mexico.
You Have Already Gone to the Other World is A Hawk and a Hacksaw's sixth studio album with the subtitle "Music inspired by Paradjanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors". It is a concept album which is written as a retrospective soundtrack for the 1964 movie Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Parajanov.
Jim Stallings is an American musician who played as a bassist with the Sir Douglas Quintet and had a successful single as a solo artist with "Heya". As J.J. Light, Stallings also issued an LP Heya! in 1969, though another 11 songs recorded for a second album were not released until included as bonus tracks on a CD reissue of the first album in 2008.
Forest Bathing is the seventh studio album by A Hawk and a Hacksaw. It was released April 13, 2018. Prior to its release, the song "A Broken Road Lined With Poplar Trees" premiered on Under the Radar's website.
Leaving Meaning is the fifteenth studio album by American experimental band Swans. It was released October 25, 2019 on Young God and Mute. A double album, Leaving Meaning's songs have been mixed separately for vinyl and CD releases, with the CD version of the album containing the original mixes of the songs, as well as an additional track, "Some New Things". As with all Swans' releases of the 2010s, Leaving Meaning was financed by a fundraiser album – in this case, What Is This? in March 2019.