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Writer's pictureThe Sound Cafe

Laurel Premo Announces New Album of Guitar Instrumentals, Originals + Drawn from Old Sources


By Devon Leger.



Michigan’s Laurel Premo is known for her experimental work re-crafting the roots of music from Appalachia, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. She’s just announced a new album of sparkling guitar (and lap guitar) instrumentals, both original and taken from older sources. In the vein of John Fahey, he’s reworking these melodies into a new sound, electrifying the old traditions. Check out her first single, “Jericho", from the album, Golden Loam.


Premo is known for her experimental work recrafting the roots of music from Appalachia, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. She’s just announced a new album of sparkling guitar (and lap guitar) instrumentals, both original and taken from older sources. In the vein of John Fahey, he’s reworking these melodies into a new sound, electrifying the old traditions.


Following The Iron Trios (2019), Premo’s sophomore release builds on the dark roots world she arranged, with seeking, untethered delivery and a masterful use of space, on a dynamic wave of warm, gritty sustain. Laurel’s vocals on two pieces ‘Hop High’ and ‘I Am A Pilgrim’ are traditional calls beaconing the guitar’s response, and fold in timberly like additional instrumental lines sustaining the drone. Golden Loam was self produced and recorded during the pandemic lockdown of summer/fall 2020. The majority of the record is solo performance, but two featured collaborators are woven in to this embodied rhythmic collection. Percussive dancer Nic Gareiss (Michigan) appears on tracks 5 & 9, and bones player Eric Breton (Quebec) on track 3.


Laurel Premo has been writing, arranging music and touring since 2009 with vocal and instrumental roots acts. She is internationally known from her duo Red Tail Ring.


Know also for her rhythmically deep and rapt delivery of roots music on fiddle, guitar, and vocals. Her solo performances dive deep into traditional and new fiddle music, musically revealing a bloom of underlying harmonic drones, minimalist repetition, and rich polyrhythms. Presenting these sounds on finger style electric guitar and fiddle, Premo fully leans in to the archaic melodies and in-between intonations that connect folk sounds to the mystic and unknown.







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