Unwed Sailor 'The White Ox' album

It's been a few years since we've heard from Unwed Sailor, but constant Johnathon Ford is back with another longplayer of subtly crafted, nearly ambient post-rock-esque soundscapes. Mostly instrumental, but sometimes augmented with near-whispered vocals, The White Ox contains six soundscapes that seem to slow down time until everything moves as if submerged underwater.
It's music that allows for dreams to process, but also warrants much introspection and attention. It's music that adequately earns the title of being "blissed-out," and once the final track fades out in a slight haze of ambient gorgeousness, this record has accomplished its mission. If the wandering sound explorations of White Rainbow and the pretty sonic sleep of Tarentel are your cup of tea, Unwed Sailor's The White Ox is the kind-of surreal masterpiece you've probably been asking for all year. All tracks clean.

Biography

Johnathon Ford went to Bloomington, IN to work on some remixes of an out-of-print Unwed Sailor 7”, The Magic Hedge, in the spring of 2005 with Dan Burton (Early Day Miners, Ativin). The two had previously worked together on the first Unwed Sailor full-length, The Faithful Anchor, and the Stateless collaboration between Unwed Sailor and Burton’s Early Day Miners. There were good vibes in the Burton basement studio and the remixes were quickly engulfed by the goal to finish the new full-length, The White Ox. Ford’s bass, guitar, keyboard, and percussion parts were joined by Burton‘s guitars, extra bass from Phillip Blackwell (Questions in Dialect), and drummer Matt Griffin (Early Day Miners) to mix up their medicine drawing on ambient production influences from Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (with whom Dan Burton had interned). Back in Seattle, Ford later enlisted the help of Kevin Barrans (Rosie Thomas, Damien Jurado) to add pennywhistle and accordion parts which were recorded by Josh Myers, who recorded Jeremy Enigk's forthcoming World Waits album.

The White Ox continues on from where The Marionette and the Music Box left off with "Shadows" echoing those staccato melodies, but channeling them through a dark dream of ambient effects. Here, Ford and Burton are challenging their audience, the fans who loved the upbeat melodies of The Faithful Anchor and were charmed by the sweet fairytale aspects of Marionette. The White Ox is brooding, washed in the night air darkness to which "Shadows" alludes. Suprisingly, for the traditionally instrumental Unwed Sailor, both "Gila" and "Numbers" feature Burton's vocals, with Ford's murmuring falsetto providing the haunting background for "Gila's" almost gothic melody. Johnathon Ford grew up in Oklahoma and there are hints of Native American imagery in the album's themes and spacious sensation and "Night Diamond's" shimmering countermelody evoking nocturnal sounds in open country, culminating in "Pelican's" airy, birdlike pennywhistle melodies. These music elements all connect to the cover images of both the Circles ep and The White Ox album. UK artist James Marsh was enlisted for the cover artwork for both. His distinct mystical images have also graced the album covers of every one of legendary band Talk Talk’s releases.

Born in Seattle in 1998 at the tender age of intent, Unwed Sailor is helmed by Oklahoma-born songwriter Johnathon Ford. The basis for the instrumental project came into being while Ford was still writing with Seattle luminaries Roadside Monument; pulling toward a bass guitar-oriented sound, the songs he’d begun to craft did not wholly feel right for Roadside Monument, thus the unbeknownst predestined forming of Unwed Sailor. Not aiming for Unwed Sailor to fall into the regular confines of a typical band, Ford’s ever-evolving cast and crew has been tirelessly composed over the years of good friends and company, as the band has since been relocated and based out of cities across the United States including Chicago, New York, Jackson, MS, Little Rock, AR, and back now to Seattle. With over 13 U.S. tours and 4 in Europe, the band has traveled almost as much as it’s evolved.

Since their 1998 debut release Firecracker, the band has continued to endeavor side-door studies into the pictures behind sound, opening myriad avenues of instrumental excavation on their first full-length The Faithful Anchor to short-film soundtracks for filmmaker Chris Bennett, resulting in Stateless (a full-band collaboration with Early Day Miners) and the music to For Johnathan alongside bands like The Album Leaf and Tarantel. In 2003, the shape of Unwed Sailor changed dramatically as the sound ensued less a standard suite of songs, becoming more like a growing creature, cinematically operated and tell-tale both in its sonic and packaged presentation. The resulting album was recorded and released as The Marionette and the Music Box; music set to tell the painted story of a lonely little marionette in search of a cherished, lost music box. Describing the picturesque rushes and swells of a rather unique orchestra, Ford has become a maestro in his own rite, leading his band through pieces as suited for concert halls as they are the hot, impassioned stages of dark nightclubs from city to city. And as a live performance, the music is only more chaotic in its finely tuned restraints; here audiences are treated to a powerful performance, played out as though on the screen, and walking away from the shows as though from a theater, excited and curious about the world again. On stage, Unwed Sailor as people melt away, becoming nobody and everybody at the same time; a two-hearted octopus with every arm working twice as hard.

A Seattle based Unwed Sailor has toured twice during 2006 already with a month-long stint through the South and Midwest in early summer, with many dates accompanying me without you, and a two week romp up the west coast this August. The band is set for a solid month in Europe with 30+ dates in Germany, Holland, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the UK during September and October. They'll be back in the US to tour in support of the formal release of The White Ox, carrying on down the lonesome, always stretching road.

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Tracklisting

Unwed Sailor - The White Ox