ArtemesiaBlack

Artist: Artemesia Black
Album: Artemesia Black
Website:
http://www.myspace.com/artemesiablack
Genre: alternative gothic swamp lullabies
Technical Grade: 10/10
Production/Musicianship Grade: 10/10
Commercial Value: 10/10
Overall Talent Level: 10/10
Songwriting Skills: 10/10
Performance Skill: 10/10
Best Songs: Beautiful, Rosie, Shipwreck, Maryjanes, Love
CD Review:

Artemesia Black is a duo consisting of Sabine Heusler and Kenny Schick. Their self titled new CD has taken me by surprise and stolen my heart. Their sterling acoustic guitar work and haunting vocals provide the perfect support for their well written songs. This genre they’re calling alternative swamp lullabies is a blend of chillingly spot on harmonies, crisp acoustic guitar, and a thematic reliance on ghosts. The result is mesmerizing.

There are so many great songs and sounds on this CD that is difficult to know where to begin. Beautiful, the fourth cut on the CD, fades in with a picked acoustic guitar and slide. Heusler’s vocal is soulful and passionate; the harmony with Schick is sublime. “You had me with my bags packed, turned my head, knife in my back” sings Heusler while the slide wails behind her. This is melancholy at its best.

The first cut, Rosie has Schick’s acoustic lead echoing Heusler’s haunting vocal. The harmonics created by the closely picked guitars ring through the mix and provide the perfect bed for her chilling vocals. Schick shows off his prowess on lead with a solo that is alternately bluesy and classical sounding. Good Til Now is a blues based ballad that again showcases incredible harmonies and stellar guitar playing. I love the discordant beginning of Shipwreck. The ghostly, creepy feel is deliciously dramatic and exactly the right choice for this mesmerizing story. Maryjanes features an incredible vocal arrangement that blends harmony and counterpoint with a pulsing rhythm that transfixes the listener.

There is not a bad song on Artemesia Black. This is easily one of the best albums I’ve heard this year. Everything about it is perfect from the beautifully crafted songs to the haunting performances. The arrangements are spellbinding, fresh and interesting and the production is flawless. I will be listening to Artemesia Black over and over again as well as introducing it to my friends. This is a great album. - http://musesmuse.com/columnistsgreylogs/archives/mrev-artemesiablack.html

This CD is amazing. Sabine posesses one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices I ever heard.

I had first seen singer-songwriter Kenny Schick play a double bill with Adrianne at a house concert last summer, and not only was I blown away by his substantial guitar fingerpicking prowess and songwriting skill, but quite taken by his personal story, a fairy tale come true. They formed the duo ArtemesiaBlack, which features the songs written by Sabine, and started recording tracks and performing.


Kenny's soft tenor blends in perfectly on backing vocals, and his supporting instrumentation (Sabine plays guitar) is impeccable. The songs are perfectly mastered.

All but two of the ten songs are written by Sabine, the other selections by Gillian Welch and PJ Harvey.

Still, I managed to accomplish what I most desired - getting my hands on that CD, and most important of all, getting to meet Sabine! I was also able to stay for one song, which practically had me swooning with its beauty.

- http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=85796206&blogId=473946131

By Shay Quillen
Mercury News Columnist
Posted: 07/16/2009 12:00:00 AM PDT

You can't make this stuff up: On New Year's Day 2006, veteran Bay Area musician Kenny Schick meets a shy Australian graphic designer named Sabiné Heusler on MySpace. The two strike up an intense online friendship. Next thing you know, Schick is dropping everything to head to Melbourne, where a personal and musical relationship catches fire. The two record a self-titled CD together, as ArtemesiaBlack, and after a series of wild downs and ups, including a U.S. tour in Schick's Honda Civic, the two are now married, living in the Bay Area, and preparing for one of their biggest shows to date, at 7 p.m. Friday at the Theatre on San Pedro Square, 29 N. San Pedro St., San Jose.
Schick promises a theatrical experience full of lights, costumes, sets and, of course, the beautifully spooky music of the duo, backed by a four-piece band. Hang Jones opens. Tickets are $12 at www.brownpapertickets.com.

Contact Shay Quillen at squillen@mercurynews.com or 408-920-2741.

- http://www.mercurynews.com/shayquillen/ci_12843190

“There are three kinds of American folk artist: those who sit, contented, on a back porch contemplating America's landscape and ways; those for whom its landscape and ways are something to stand against or move boldly through; and those whose America is a shadowy, impressionistic place that moves inside of them. This [latter] is the area that the sombre-voiced Richard Buckner has been exploring since 1984” (Sylvie Simmons; The Guardian, 2004)

Meadow is the 8th full-length recording from Richard Buckner, and his second for Merge Records. Meadow marks the latest chapter in a story that began in San Francisco, back in the early 90’s, and has seen Buckner chase his muse across the U.S. and Canada many times. Buckner’s body of work has always seemed to be about motion vs. stillness: about the impulse to run away or towards something; or watching something/someone leave or approach. The restless energy of the heart, full speed ahead, the consequences taken and embraced, the good and the bad. The false starts, roadblocks and pitfalls along the way only add to the richness of the journey.

Meadow was recorded in and around Brooklyn, NY, where Richard now makes his home. It marks the auspicious reunion of Buckner and J.D. Foster, the man who produced Buckner classics Since, Devotion + Doubt and Impasse. The album was recorded in rather Spartan environs – Buckner’s apartment, JD’s hallway and an old abandoned pencil factory – where Richard seems to best tap his muse.

The album soars and swells around Buckner’s signature trifecta of enigmatic poetics, swirling melodies, and that voice – oh, that voice! - a soothing drawl that’s somehow haunting and soothing all at once.

The melodies on Meadow are fleshed out by band that reads like a collection of all-stars: Doug Gillard (Guided By Voices, Cobra Verde, solo); Kevin March (GBV, Those Bastard Souls, Dambuilders); JD Foster, and Steven Goulding (Mekons, Gram Parker, Waco Brothers). Buckner has always had a knack for surrounding himself with musicians who challenge him, and who bring a unique vision to each project. Doug Gillard’s guitar work is especially poignant here, seemingly the perfect foil as he and Buckner play off one another to add an element to the recordings that is refreshing and new.

Simply put, Meadow is Richard Buckner at his finest. One of our greatest songwriters adding to an already impressive canon. Fresh and evocative, poignant and real. Documenting “the modern age wrapped up in the frustrations and sympathies of a wanderer” (Austin Chronicle).

Kenny Schick/ArtemesiaBlack

Death is not an end... it is the ultimate and unavoidable confrontation with 'self'...

...you know when you meet new people... and they're dead... when i meet them they always want to be stories that are sung, i think it makes them feel happy and not forgotten...

"ArtemesiaBlack live shows are theatrical and make you feel captivated - like a kid listening to stories" - http://thecrepeplace.com/home/component/option,com_events/task,view_detail/agid,265/year,2009/month,

Negotiations With The Dead

Sabine’s voice starts out cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. The Australian singer is dressed in black pin stripes with a red skull and crossbone printed onto her shirt, like a rotting apple, like a ruby drop of blood. Kenny, her guitarist, performs in matching pin stripes, honey-curled hair pulled back at the nape. He is playful and quick on the guitar with the dust-bowl quality of John Fahey. Together, they are Artemesia Black: a comfortable circle of two—intimate and shy to the crowd perched inside Alchemy coffeehouse in late August. Their music sounds like strange objects in the darkness, things petrified in stone and doll and spoons. Kenny’s guitar bubbles like a kettle. Sabine’s voice splashes about like a stricken bird.

Salt Lake City is the couple’s first stop on a tour from San Francisco to New York City and back in the next two months. Sabine left her lucrative career in Australia as a graphic artist for the tour.

“I started feeling, ‘What if I died tomorrow?’ I started going through that thought process, thinking what if I did, would I be happy? Would I feel like I accomplished anything? I thought there is a lot of dreams I haven’t accomplished yet so I am going to quit everything, get on a plane and come here to do music for awhile and try to organize a tour across the country and live another type of mind space going from very structured life to where I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow,” she says.

Kenny too left his job of fourteen years in 2007 to travel to Australia after the couple met over MySpace to record their group’s eponymous debut.

“Kenny bought a makeshift recording rig and we worked on the album sporadicallywhen I wasn’t working,” says Sabina.

Kenny notes, “With this album I heard a lot of percussion but we didn’t have drums and stuff so I found things around the apartment that sounded really good like her washing machine for instance that was used as the bass drum, or stomping on the floor and all sorts of things. I tend to use lots of non-traditional, in fact non-instrumental things to make sounds."

Kenny is a classically disciplined musician from San Francisco. He recorded and released Basement 3 Under last year in Australia while also recording the couple’s album. When asked how he manages to pair his distinct sound with her lyrics he notes,

“For me what I’ve always enjoyed doing is taking people’s songs and then sculpting them, taking their raw ideas and sculpting it into a song because I play many instruments so I have a lot of textures available.”

He continues, “I also have a broad palette instrumentally and I have studied everything from Jazz to Classical so there is a lot of things I can borrow from so I have a never ending source of sounds coming to me.”

Artemesia Black is an album rich in swampy lullabies similar to PJ Harvey’s White Chalk. The soft country influence plays it part in a gothic narrative told through the haunting voice of Sabine, a voice like a huge knife dripping blood onto a nightdress. The guitar and percussion give the album the quality of The Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session. Kenny’s presence is untreated and tender, the sound of something whimpering and scratching at the door.

“Sabine is like making a painting when she writes whereas I come from a very technical background so there is a lot of technique involved which in some ways hinders me.” Kenny says. “On this album I stripped it down a lot and on the new stuff I am stripping down even more and trying to get to be more about the feeling and less about the technique."

At times the album is of soap-powder and fresh air, other times it is the clean lines of broken glass, the soothing edges of razor blades packed at the bottom of a cradle. Danger plays like strange comforters in stories told through the memories of dead girls and devil whisperings.

“Songs sometimes will come to me in visitations, from a person who is dead. Whether it is imaginary or real it feels like someone comes and says, ‘I’ve got a story for you, I had this life and now it’s forgotten because I’m dead. Maybe you could just tell the story of me so that I am not forgotten.’ It’s kind about the past,” says Sabine, “but a person presents it to me themselves in this moment,” she continues.
Songs such as “Rosie” and “Beautiful” re-tell these stories from the dead, narratives overcrowded with inimical action and death, stories about young women falling in love with men that will kill them.

“These stories, most of them about women, like girls that come to me, I call them my dead girls, that come and tell me their stories about their lives and sometimes about how they’ve died,” says Sabine. “Because their stories are such a sad thing for most people I like to juxtaposed that with pretty melodies so people won’t even know what the story is about because it is hidden under this nice melody."

The result of these negotiations with the dead is an original and haunting collection of songs. A wholly imaginative collaboration between the living, the dead, a guitarist, and an inventive singer.

(Tara Jill Olson)

POSTED BY SALT LAKE CITY WEEKLY AT 10:32 AM - http://cityweekly.blogspot.com/2008/09/web-exclusive-artemesia-black.html

THE duo behind Artemesia Black are as fascinated by the Winchester Mystery House as everybody else.

"I actually wanted to get a job there when I first moved here," says Sabine Heusler, an Australian transplant who settled in the South Bay last year.

Meanwhile, Kenny Schick, who grew up in Mountain View, has been through it plenty of times.

"I've always fantasized about, you know, drifting off from the pack, and then you're on your own," he says.

The difference is that Heusler and Schick don't just want to tour the Winchester Mystery House, or man the souvenir shop. They want to play there. It's kind of a goal, even. In fact, they'd like to take their spooky-pretty acoustic songs—"alternative gothic swamp lullabies," by their own reckoning—on a tour of historic houses across the country. It's an idea that came up one day on a bike ride to Mountain View's Rengstorff House, which beginning in the 1960s began to get a reputation for freaky supernatural activity.

"I said, 'Wouldn't this be a great place to do a gig, and have people come dressed up?'" remembers Schick. The Historic House Fantasy Tour was born.

"Sabine's music is perfect for it, too," he says, "because a lot of these houses come with ghost stories."

And that's exactly what Heusler writes for Artemesia Black—ghost stories. Not just for an occasional song here or there, but all of them.

"Really, the whole thing is about ghosts," says Heusler, "and people not being forgotten. I think my take on the whole ghost thing is that they're just people. But a lot of people don't realize the songs are about ghosts.

"Her lyrics are cryptic enough that you might not know," says Schick.

Maybe not, but clues are likely to jump out to even the most casual listener. "You lost your head back in Spain, you blame me," Heusler sings on "Rosie," from Artemesia Black's recent album. Or on "Maryjanes": "They say I fell, they say I drowned or something."

For a woman who writes and sings ghost stories, what happens to the normally reserved Heusler onstage couldn't be more apt. "Her first big show, I was like 'What has gotten into her?'" says Schick.

"I think I get possessed, actually," she admits. "When I get onstage, I become someone else."

It's taken a while for her to get to this point, though. For years, Heusler wrote songs only for herself, and dreaded even telling anyone about their existence. She met Schick over the Internet in 2006, while he was planning a trip to Austrailia. After months of corresponding by email—including some marathon 10-hour writing sessions—she came clean about her musical output, and sent him a tape—as in, an actual cassette. Which wasn't easy for her, since she knew that besides his work as a solo artist he'd played in dozens of bands here, including the somewhat legendary San Jose band Dot 3, and other popular Bay Area bands like Neosoreskin, the Brownies and Curveball.

"I thought I put my foot in my mouth: 'What did you tell him that for?'" she says. "I got the cassette in the mail," Schick remembers, "and she had talked it down so much, I was expecting utter rubbish. And I have to be honest about everything. I waited two or three days to listen. It blew me away."

Finally, Schick traveled to her hometown of Melbourne, and they moved in together. When he had to return to the States to take care of his elderly father, she followed. They took Artemesia Black on the road for a 2 1/2 month tour of the United States that was difficult for Heusler, who was still getting over her stage jitters and didn't find noisy coffeehouses a great showcase for her music. When they got back, they decided to take a different approach, setting up events that provide a proper setting for acoustic music and room to indulge their theatrical, dark-carnival style.

"I love going to see theatrical bands like the Dresden Dolls," says Heusler. "I thought, I want to do something like that, something a little extra. I love the whole dressing up thing, I've always loved that."

The Theatre on San Pedro Square, where they'll perform their first show with a full band on Friday, may not be the Winchester Mystery House, but it suits them. Though Schick's background is in loud and heavy electric bands, he sees Artemesia Black fitting in with an acoustic scene that has allowed unplugged acts like Gillian Welsh and Iron and Wine to find huge audiences. These are the people they feel a connection to, and would love to play with.

"And Nick Drake, of course," says Heusler. "If his ghost would come back."


ARTEMESIA BLACK perform at Theatre on San Pedro Square, 29 N. San Pedro Street, on Friday (July 17) at 7pm. Hang Jones opens. Tickets are $12. (408.306.2356) - http://www.metroactive.com/metro/07.15.09/music-0928.html