Radio K presents THE DAREDEVIL CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT and ANAÏS MITCHELL
THE DAREDEVIL CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT
Born in 2004 out of the thriving music scene in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, The Daredevil Christopher Wright unites brothers Jon and Jason Sunde with the percussion and vocals of friend Jesse Edgington. Their first full length album In Deference to a Broken Back, an expansive and collaborative effort, was released through Amble Down Records. Their sophomore album, 2012‘s The Nature of Things, is a result of asking what can be created by three men at ease with their instruments; storytellers at heart.
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Where In Deference enlisted the help of a large group of friends and fellow musicians, The Nature of Things scales back. Recorded by Patrick Stolley, founding engineer for the celebrated music blog Daytrotter, the album reflects simplicity. “With The Nature Of Things, we made an intentional effort to focus and tighten the writing. To try to confine the arrangements to elements that the three of us could perform,” says Jon. Their classical voice training and pleasing, sometimes unexpected harmonies are evident throughout the album in pieces such as “Church” and “Ames, IA,” where we we are allowed to glimpse, in eavesdropped conversations—a couple divorcing, a meth addict begging for freedom and church bells tolling for no other reason but that the dead rest below. Like the Wanderer who returns home only to find what’s already “written on the spine of every holy lowly man, woman, creature, and child,” the experience of seeing something in its stripped away form is “a love letter in kind” (“Andrew the Wanderer”), a gift to those who “keep hobbled hopes under lock and key” (“We Fold Inside of Us”). “The world is full of many things to be loved and despised, but also simply seen,” says Jason. “What is the nature of things? You’re looking at it, however it may be, right now.”
ANAÏS MITCHELL
Wilderland Records / Thirty Tigers is set to release Young Man in America, the fourth album from Vermont-based artist Anaïs Mitchell on February 28, 2012. For her new album, Mitchell continues her work with producer / arranger Todd Sickafoose, who assembled some of NYC’s most sought-after rock and experimental jazz players including guitarist Adam Levy, violinist Jenny Scheinman, and drummers Andrew Borger and Kenny Wollesen. Chris Thile of Punch Brothers appears on mandolin as well as alongside Jefferson Hamer and Rachel Ries in a harmonic chorus. Michael Chorney, who scored Mitchell’s last release Hadestown and produced her previous albums (2007’s The Brightness and 2004’s Hymns of the Exiled), makes a guest appearance on guitar.
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Young Man follows Mitchell’s critically beloved 2010 folk opera Hadestown, a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth set in a Depression era America. The album, which features guest singers Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Ani Difranco, and Ben Knox-Miller (the Low Anthem), landed her on numerous “Best of 2010” lists including The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Observer. Young Man is not an opera, but it is an epic tale with multiple protagonists. As a songwriter Mitchell takes on the voices of different characters, men as well as women.. The hero of the title track is “a restless character on a feverish hunt for pleasure and success. Alcohol, fame, money, sex—nothing satisfies him,” says Mitchell. “He’s desirous and very sad.” This character, and the record as a whole, was inspired in part by the every-man-for-himself side of America that she glimpsed during our recent recession. Mitchell will tour Young Man in early 2012 making an appearance at SXSW while she continues performances of Hadestown.
CUDDLE MAGIC
Cuddle Magic is a band and songwriting collective from Brooklyn and Philadelphia that performs lush, playful songs with wide-ranging instrumentation including strings, percussion, vibraphone, trumpet, clarinet, keyboards, guitars, and many voices. Cuddle Magic balances folk timbres with surprising atonal harmonies, pop song-craft with Steve Reich-inspired rhythmic complexity, and direct emotional lyrics with dense wordplay.




