Kapow!Music: "rustic pop intimacy"

Bu Hanan Records has about the best ratio of talent to roster possible: a pretty small group of bands and musicians, but I really like every last one of them. After talking about Go Machine and related projects and The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers in recent weeks, it's time to complete the sweep with Kapow!Music.

Kapow is John Ribo, who recently moved from Austin to Chapel Hill, plus a cast of additional musicians, including many of the other Bu Hanan artists. Sort of a lo-fi travelogue, A Texan In Europe Revisited consists of songs written over the last six years in a variety of settings as Ribo "contemplates experiences wandering in and wondering at the strange world."

As with a number of other artists I've praised recently, Kapow!Music generates an intruiging mix of sounds by blending acousting guitar and other organic textures with a wide range of studio and electronic elaborations. I like this description from the Independent: "A solid, friendly album whose moods move like weather through gray skies, cloudy mornings, little rainbows and bursts of sunshine."

MP3: "The Day I Met You"
--this solo acoustic performance shows the strong foundation these songs are built on.
(Live on WKNC)

MP3: "Ma Tutrice"
--a mellow, springlike song. It'll make you feel good.
MP3: "Just There"
--a little darker and noisier, but that's all relative. If that was spring, this is fall, not the bleak midwinter.
(from A Texan in Europe Revisited, Bu Hanan 2004. Buy it here.)