#40: I Hear the Mountains Are Doin' Fine
A New Era for British High Fidelity and Stunning, Stoned Country Rock from NZ
Welcome to the Ambient Audiophile—where burning a CD for a friend is celebrated and encouraged.
Before getting into it, I want to let heads know that I’m ramping up posts on Bluesky. I’ve been on it a lot this week and the music heads are there and sharing & celebrating. Links aren’t buried and my feed isn’t intruded upon by conservative idiocy. It’s good but I do love this random diss of the app from some anonymous loser on Youtube: “It’s a lefty copium den.” Widen the circle here.
Episode 152 of The Trailhead went off without a hitch and is now up on our Mixcloud. The first set leaned into a lot of great modern music blurring the lines between post-rock and jazz. Nicolas Chkifi’s Motian Love Dance on Ramble Records continues to delight as does the comparably wilder Prayer In Dub from NYC quartet Body Meπa on Chicago’s Hausu Mountain label. Finland’s Solar Unity Ensemble remains a top discovery of 2024 and Lifted’s forthcoming LP Trellis on the Peak Oil imprint is a revelation. Hear them all in a nice mix in the show’s first hour.
The second hour was dedicated to the much lauded Phil Lesh Quintet—Phil Lesh, Rob Barraco,Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring and John Molo. We heard a trio of beautiful Soundboard recordings from the band’s Autumn tour of 2000 with hits from Burlington, Boston and Denver. Since the passing of Lesh, I’ve been getting deep into his post-Dead projects and this one for sure delivers the goods almost every night. Hear the band’s massive takes on “St. Stephen”, “Here Comes Sunshine” and “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” when you press that button down below.
Listen to the show here and peep the tracklist below. And if you haven’t already, please make a free Mixcloud account and give us a follow over there and like and repost the shows. It really helps spread the word.
The Trailhead 152:
1. Hirotaka Shirotsubaki - March Rain and Gray Green Sea - Trivial Affair (Lontano Series, 2024) 00:00
2. Nicolas Chkifi - Arabesque - Motian Love Dance (Ramble, 2024) 06:59
3. Solar Unity Ensemble - Emergence - Upstream (Mustik Motel Music, 2024) 12:22
4. Lifted - All Right - Trellis (Peak Oil, 2024) 19:02
5. Body Meπa - Adnan - Prayer In Dub (Hausu Mountain, 2024) 25:56
6. H.A.N.K. - Cruise - The Big Melt (Second Circle, 2024) 34:28
7. John Abercrombie / Marc Johnson / Peter Erskine - Samurai Hee Haw - John Abercrombie / Marc Johnson / Peter Erskine (ECM, 1989) 41:13
8. Phil Lesh & Friends - St. Stephen - 2000-10-01, Burlington, VT 1:03:24
9. Phil Lesh & Friends - The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys - 2000-10-06, Boston, MA (PhilZone, 2000) 1:18:43
10. Phil Lesh & Friends - Here Comes Sunshine - 2000-10-24, Denver, CO (PhilZone, 2000) 1:38:02
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I read every email, comment, and direct message from readers here and listeners of the radio show. Believe me, even if I don’t respond for a couple years, I take it all in. And I’m so very thankful for that. I’ve been hipped to so much amazing music thanks to this community. If I’ve left you on read and unanswered, please accept my deepest apology.
Thanks to Mitch in Scotland, I’ve really been enjoying the ragged glories of Auckland quartet Te HuHu. The New Zealand group just released their second long player, Deelishis Herbs, via Grubby Records. The late days of Autumn always have me launching into a folk rock leaf pile and this year’s dive was kicked off with that great Lee Baggett record we talked about last week. And then we had Neil Young’s 79th birthday that had me cranking up that awesome 1990 live lp released a few years ago. And then there’s the regular and now we get this absolute burner from Te HuHu.
I guess what Te HuHu do on Deelishis Herbs can be best summed up as a very stoned, shoegazey take on country rock. The album’s sound/mix is fantastic with a lot of space and atmosphere amongst the languid acoustic strums and mercurial lead guitar lines. Some of the songs had me thinking about how much I love Moby Grape ‘69, while others had me making a mental note to find my copy of the Blows Against the Empire or to listen to Floyd’s Zabriskie Point sessions more. While I’m at it, where is my goddamn CD of My Morning Jacket’s At Dawn?! You know how you wish “Dirt Business” on the first New Riders LP went on forever? Well, Te HuHu know the feeling and reach for that acid horizon on their latest offering. I also appreciate that the band look like pretty regular dudes on the cover of Deelishis Herbs, not models in some promoted post by a jean company. I don’t know why that helps me take them more seriously but it does. Anyway, the jams here are truly excellent and well played and recorded and pretty much essential for all of us who absolutely thrive in 38 degrees with partly cloudy skies and leaves all over the ground. Take Deelishis Herbs for a ride into your closest mountain range and have a truly excellent afternoon.
I am a big fan of high fidelity gear from the UK. Ever since being blown away by my buddy’s vintage Naim setup forever ago, I’ve sought to learn and hear as much of the stuff as possible. My beloved home integrated amp, the Heed Obelisk SI Mk III—although made in Hungary—is based on a UK designed and built amp from the 80s. I proudly and emphatically use a Rega Planar 3 turntable and my first pair of great speakers were Celestion SL6S’s.
So it is with great excitement that I read about the unveiling of Fell Audio—a new company set to debut with two budget-friendly pieces of gear designed and built in Britain. Fell Audio are backed by the Cumbrian audio dealer Peter Tyson and promise that their products are as earth-friendly and sustainable as possible.
Currently on offer from the company is the Fell Amp, a 89 WPC integrated amplifier, and the Fell Disc CD player. The amplifier is a Class D, something I don’t have a ton of experience with but a technology most in the industry believe to be the future and the CD player boasts a ESS ES9018K2M DAC chip that most digital know-it-alls will tell you is a very, very solid launchpad for digital-to-analog conversion. Fell Disc does have digital outs to utilize an external DAC of your choice however.
The Fell Amp has a built in MM phono preamp, two digital inputs (optical and coaxial connecting to a ESS Sabre ES9018K2M DAC), and three additional analog inputs. It does feature built in Bluetooth 5.0 but that should only be used if you are trapped under a toppled over LP rack and just can’t connect anything else to play.
I’m going to reach out to see if there are plans for US distribution but you UK heads should know the Fell Amp retails for £600 and the Fell Disc will set you back £500. Apparently a streamer is on the way as well. Hopefully this stuff lives up to its looks (love those designs and the company logo is EXCELLENT) so I’ll be keeping an eye out for review and, hopefully, we can get one to mess around with and report on. For now, keep up with Fell Audio on Instagram.