Visitations is a Portland, Maine-based group of free-form psych-folk purveyors whose sound is not entirely dissimilar to what Father Yod and Yo Ho Wha 13 might sound like were they extant today. Eschewing self-promotion, their web presence is virtually nonexistent; the principal driving force behind the group — a gentleman known only as Brendan — doesn’t even have an email address.
Cursillistas was the name Matthew Lajoie gave to a lo-fi folk recording project in 2005. Four years and nearly a dozen releases later, Cursillistas has grown from its original solo voice and focus to an all-encompassing collaboration between Lajoie and several rotating musicians in New England. Cursillistas uses simple fingerpicked guitars, electric slide, banjo, tribal drums and layered voices to create music anywhere in the range between strictly improvisational, esoteric experiments and folk-and-country-inspired outsider pop songs. The past year has seen them share the stage with such acts as MV & EE, Natural Snow Buildings, Castanets, Kemialliset Ystavat, and Lau Nau. Their first widely-available CD–Wasp Stings the Last Bitter Flavor–was released in 2008 by Digitalis Industries, with an upcoming 12″LP / CD to be co-released by Time-Lag Records and L’animaux Tryst in March 2009.
White Light is the pop-ambience of Ian Paige with lots of help from the L’Animaux Tryst family up in Portland, Maine. The latest release is a split 7″ with Barry Burst and a new LP is out soon, both on L’ATFR.