So I stumbled across a little bit of a sampler a week or so ago.  Somehow found it while floundering around various links on the interwebs due to my love of the Sarah Winchester EP (posted on it here – Highly Recommended).  Turns out that this Cascadia compilation hosted a pre-release version of “Oh the Herons” from Sarah Winchester that is also on her new Northeast Kingdom Demos EP.  I also had to include the stunning untitiled track from Ms. Tara Jane O’Neil as well.  Nice, very nice.

The compilation is basically an anthology of Portland “Folk” music and is part of a project that gathers field recordings of local artists which are then compiled in free CD-R editions. Both Sarah and Tara Jane have a song included on this, the initial installment (or Volume One as it indicates).

Sarah Winchester’s MySpace profile has a snippet on the recording of her contribution:

“…Gabriel came to my house with a tiny digital recorder and recorded me singing “Oh the Herons” in my bedroom while dogs barked next door…”

The project was curated/compiled by Gabriel Mindel Saloman and includes 7 other artists besides O’Neil and Winchester – I just selected the two on this post as I found their tracks to be the stand outs for me personally.  The entire project is a free download that you can grab on the site here.  You might want to dig around that site for a bit of very interesting reading as well.

Tracklist:

1. Gordon Wilson Ashworth: Desperate and Indebted
2. Sarah Winchester: Oh the Herons
3. GMS: Hollow and Full
4. David Rafn: Frowning Sun
5. Nick Bindeman: Untitled
6. Tara Jane O’Neil: Untitled
7. JP Jenkins: Kelvin Shaped Box
8. Au: Honeybee
9. The Sasquatch Human Campfire Band: Single Girl

Let’s all look forward to Volume Two now!

~Smansmith