Since I was a little boy I’ve always wanted to be someone’s personal lifestyle reporter. Ted Gioia be damned; it’s my dream! Over the course of a few news posts about Ben Chasny and his projects I’ve sent out feelers, trying to subtly make it clear that if he wants me, I’m right here, just itching to cover his makeup-free trips to the local grocery store, in addition to whatever “music stuff” he decides to do in his free time. Well, I finally got tired of waiting for Ben to pick up on my signals, so I’m going to come right out and be the squeaky wheel, hoping for some good-old patent-pending Chasny-grease: Mr. Chasny, I, Taylor Peters, would like to report on your lifestyle.
In between dating a string of heiresses and making an appearance at Kimye’s wedding, Chasny has also managed to find time to start a new record label — Hermit Hut Records. The label’s first release, planned for August 19, will be the proper LP debut of the Asheville-based Bhutanese guitarist Tashi Dorji. If I was going to do a lifestyle report on Dorji, the thing would mostly consist of Dorji coming to terms with the fact that he is far too good at making the acoustic guitar sound like it’s about 30 different instruments at once. Dorji wakes up in the morning and is all like, “Shit, I guess today I should really put some work into coming to terms with how good I am at the guitar. Also, that was a pretty weird sentence that probably no human would say. A good lifestyle reporter should be better at dialogue.”
Over a series of mostly-sold-out-now tapes (my personal favorite is last year’s self-titled one on Asheville’s Headway Recordings) has gone full-tilt, unearthing as many sounds as he possibly can from his instrument, all while, as established above, failing to really come to terms with how good he is at what he’s been doing. It’s really effected his lifestyle, which is why I’m telling you about it here. Anyhow, Chasny decided he ought to divert a bit of his Chasny grease in Dorji’s direction, which, again, is why we’re here. The self-titled album, which is Dorji’s first proper LP release, is a compilation, collecting tracks from his numerous tape releases. Neither Chasny nor Dorji could be reached for comment on how this particular release has impacted their lifestyles, but I suspect they would both use the word “whirlwind” at least twice in their descriptions. Listen to the opening track below, and pre-order the album here (hop on it quick, the first 50 pre-orders get an extra-special cassette single with even more music from Dorji).
Tashi Dorji tracklist:
01. Improvisation I
02. April
03. Few Thousand Words Without Any
04. Improvisation II
05. Still III
06. Sunder
• Tashi Dorji: http://tashidorji1.bandcamp.com
• Hermit Hut: http://www.sixorgans.com/hermit-hut-records
More about: Ben Chasny, Tashi Dorji
