SCOTT GORDON BLEICHER PHO(BLOG)GRAPHY

Catfish Breakfast. Coming soon.

Come for the tacos, stay…for the tacos.

The music video for Jake Hill’s ‘Snow Up On The Mountain’, taken from his third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow.

Happy birthday to you.

Jake Hill will be playing The Living Room on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Thursday, May 27th in support of his new album, In The Mountain’s Shadow, which will be available for purchase at the show and is now available as a digital download at Amazon.

You can read a nice write-up on the album and Jake’s inspirations at the Wicked Local Plymouth blog.

Hope to see you at the show.

A little while back I had the distinct pleasure of working on a two-day shoot with friend and Grammy-nominated organist Cameron Carpenter. The focus of the shoot was to create a number of striking image options for the covers of his soon-to-be-released double album, Cameron Live!




The CD portion of the set contains a live concert recording from The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City, while the accompanying DVD sees Cameron filmed in high definition while performing in studio, and takes you on tour with concert footage from Berlin and New York.

Cameron Live! is now available for preorder over at Concord Music Group, where you can listen to samples and read a suitably in-depth and impassioned preview of the album that ends with these thoughts on the dual covers:

For the DVD, the cover is suitably outrageous: Noel Coward meets Janis Joplin in her backstage dressing room (actually, Carpenter photographed in his New York East Village apartment). Flip the album over to find the other front, in stark contrast: Carpenter in jeans, silver boots and a t-shirt that proclaims MUSIC IS IT, reminding the listener that despite his attention to detail on the outside, it’s what they see and hear on the discs inside that matters.

Four states in four days.

It’s been a busy week, riding the rails and rolling down the highway, shooting commercial interiors and editorial portraits.

Wednesday found me in Eastern Pennsylvania, Thursday it was Southern New Jersey, and today- upstate New York. Tomorrow I’ll be on a bus to Boston followed by a train to Plymouth for Jake Hill’s album release party, so I figured that now would be as good a time as any to reveal the final artwork for In The Mountain’s Shadow.

The physical album releases tomorrow, April 24th, and the digital download will be available through iTunes the following week.

No matter the means, the end is sure to satiate your thirst for cautionary bluegrass tales, belligerent 12 bar blues, jangly CCR-esque country rockers, bittersweet coming-of-age acoustic ballads, and/or traditional hoedown foot stompers.*

My suggestion? Pick up a physical copy of the album, at the very least for that sweet album cover.

(*Catfish Breakfast, Baby Wears A Pistol, Down From The Sun, Tickertape Parade, and When The Moon Is Gone, respectively)

I just wrapped up postproduction on the music video for Jake Hill’s Down From The Sun, the lead track from Jake’s forthcoming third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow.

I may have spoken a bit prematurely when, in a recent post, I proclaimed Jake to be The New Man In Black. After watching the video below I think you’ll agree that I should have crowned him as the new King of the Canadian Tuxedo.

Enjoy.

A message in a (Miller High Life) bottle lapped up on the shore of Pho(Blog)graphy Island early this morning while I was out making my daily rounds with the metal detector. Still can’t find that Sac that I lost.

Anyway, the message was from the home office of the Cape Cod Bay Arts & Entertainment Division located in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts. Official word is that Jake Hill’s highly-anticipated third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow, will release on April 24th, accompanied by a release party and two performances from Jake and his troupe of traveling troubadours.

The festivities kick off with an all ages show at Kiskadee Coffee Co. in downtown Plymouth at 6 pm, followed up by a late evening show for the old folks (21+) at The Guru, 9:30 pm.

The very same information that I just wrote above can also be read below, albeit syntactically varied and superimposed over a very man-in-black-esque portrait of Mr. Hill with his weapon of choice, photographed by yours truly.

If I can make it back to the mainland, possibly by smuggling myself onto a passing freighter or clinging to a raft made from an old car door and empty milk jugs, then I’ll see you April 24th in Pilgrimville. Would be an epic entrance if I managed to dock at Plymouth Rock.

I wrapped up a project this week with New England-based singer/songwriter Jake Hill. Over a two day shoot we completed the cover for Jake’s soon-to-be-released third album, In The Mountain’s Shadow, shot a wide range of promotional portraits, and filmed a video for lead single and album opener ‘Down From The Sun’.

While I can’t reveal much along the lines of final album artwork and the video is in the very early stages of post-production, I have posted an outtake from the blooper reel below. Do take note of the high production values.

In The Mountain’s Shadow releases on the 24th of April. Check back then for a reveal of the album cover and video, and a record review will follow shortly thereafter.

In the meantime, you can head over to Jake’s MySpace music page and preview two tracks from the album now- ‘Blowin’ In From Newfoundland’ and ‘Unlock My Door’.

Tokyo Juxtaposed- my series of photographs pairing cultural and aesthetic imagery from modern-day Japan, went on display last Thursday at Supercore in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A small opening event marked the occasion. Old friends came out to show their support, new friends were made, and a good time was had by all in attendance.

The evening was anchored by the marathon beat/noise mashup of Loud Objects vs. DJ Nori, which allowed the juxtapositions to extend from the images on the walls and the projections on the ceiling to the sounds filling the space, and turned a darkened room into an intimate mixed media environment for a small crowd.

Below you’ll find a selection of snapshots from the evening followed by a few low resolution high definition (what?) video clips.

Thanks again to all who attended, to Katie, Kunal, and Nori for their sonic foreplay, and to Yoko and the rest of the Supercore staff for having us.

Hope to see you at the next one.

Domo arigato.

Loud Objects!

Unfortunately it looks like Tristan (aka ‘The Cute One‘) will not be in attendance as he is currently ‘out of town.’

Allegedly.

Did you just hear that? That was the sound of the collective heart of a throng of prepubescent Jersey City middle school girls breaking. Sad, sad day indeed.

But hey, we’ve still got Katie and Kunal! Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

Right?!

So look for 2/3 of Loud Objects to bring their unique brand of no bit lo fi chip tune mad scientist circuit bending with silhouetted hands projected on a wall tomfoolery.

Ready your eardrums, prepare your eye sockets, and save the date:

Tokyo Juxtaposed + Loud Objects @ Supercore
Thursday, February 11th, 7pm
305 Bedford Ave
Brooklyn

To hold you over for now, I’ve posted some outtakes below from the nigh-infamous ’stretchy blue fabric’ photo shoot debacle, the one that broke my light stand, left Kunal with a permanent limp, and got Tristan a parking ticket and a pair of chafed forearms.

Katie walked away unscathed. Way to take one for the team Katie!*

(*Not all of the information presented above may be entirely true. In fact, quite a bit of it might be made up.)

I’ve been soundtracking my end-of-the-decade tree trimming and chestnut roasting to the delightfully tipsy interpretations of holiday standards by the master craftsman, Bob Dylan.

Christmas In The Heart marks album number 47 for Dylan, and the first Christmas album of his nearly six-decade career which has seen a late renaissance of sorts since 1997’s Grammy-winning Time Out Of Mind up to last April’s Together Through Life.

And fear not, voice coaches, Christmas In The Heart features more of Dylan’s old-man-punched-in-the-throat-with-barbed-wire, tonsils-pulled-with-needle-nose-pliers, a-pack-and-a-half-a-day gargle and croon, albeit this time backed by saccharin-sweet harmonies, layers of syrupy nostalgia, and a quickly filled quota of jingling bells.

If you don’t flat out enjoy the album, you can at the very least debate with your fellow egg noggers the depth of Dylan’s objectivity during the recording process, as Christmas In The Heart continually teeters on the brink of ’so bad it’s good’ on a number of tracks that seem the result of an ill-fitting Santa suit, a half-drunk bottle of bourbon, and a late-night-on-Canal-Street karaoke machine.

It’s not until the rollicking barroom brawl/moonshine ho down of late-in-the-album track Must Be Santa that you get the idea that Dylan is in full control here, masterfully implying a measure of sly self-awareness and self-deprecating humor, as he toes it incredibly close to the line of Kmart portrait studio Santa Claus with a crying toddler up until the epiphany of this wool-pulled punch line.

As Stephen M. Deusner perfectly put it in his review of the album for Paste Magazine: “Musically, it’s wonderfully bad; conceptually, it’s just wonderful.”

This is one lump of coal that I wouldn’t mind finding at the bottom of my stocking.

I will be attending a concert this Saturday afternoon by ‘The Maverick Organist,’ Cameron Carpenter. I worked on a shoot with Cameron earlier this summer and posted about it here.

Since then, Cameron and I have completed two more photo shoots together, both with the intention of providing images for his upcoming double CD/DVD album releasing in the spring of next year.

I’ll have a few selections to show from these most recent shoots in a blog update in the not-too-distant future, as well as an update to the Musicians portfolio on my website.

Saturday’s performance will mark Cameron’s first at The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Times Square and will be recorded and released as the live CD portion of the aforementioned double album. All proceeds from the concert will go to benefit Cameron’s non profit Models Of Excellence musical heritage project.

…

Below is a look at the concert program, using a portrait of Cameron from our summer shoot as the main image. A full size PDF of the program can be downloaded at his website here, and tickets are still available here.

Consider it a unique opportunity to see a once in a generation performer whom has been called ‘a talent of Mozartean proportions,’ and leave your ecclesiastical-pipe-organ-funeral-dirge preconceptions at the door.

Loud Objects, an experimental noise and chiptune trio, have released an album called Cory Arcangels on Free Music Archive and have used a shot from a session that I did with them for the album cover.

You can listen to the album for free here.

The original image and an alternate look can be seen in the Musicians gallery on my website, here.

Oh and maybe they should be considered a four piece group if you count the overhead projector. See one of their organic, spontaneous live shows and you’ll understand.

A few behind the scenes snapshots and one alternate look from a recent shoot with Sharon Van Etten at The Metropolitan Building in Long Island City.

Art direction by Christine Be.

Two final selects from the shoot can be seen in the Musicians portfolio on my website, here.

Sharon’s debut album, Because I Was In Love, is available on iTunes and her original, eponymous self-release is available through her online store. Sharon’s moving, soulful voice and intimate lyrics are offset by her softly strummed acoustic guitar, and are accompanied by a trembling organ on standout track For You, the video for which can be seen at Pitchfork.

I’ve had the opportunity to see Sharon perform in small, dimly lit rooms around Brooklyn. If you happen to see her name on a flyer for an upcoming show or in the concert listings of, say, The Village Voice, don’t hesitate to see her live, to hear her voice- equal parts longing and lamentation, fill the space around you and in your heart. As you can tell, I’m a big fan.

Sharon can be seen on tour this fall with Toronto’s Great Lake Swimmers.

I recently had the chance to see Doves perform at Terminal 5 in Manhattan. I’ve been following the Mancunian trio since their 2000 debut, Lost Souls, but this was the first opportunity I’ve had to see them live. A few snapshots from the evening are posted below.

I highly recommend checking out Kingdom Of Rust, their first album of new material in four years.