Ric Hordinski – Notes from the Monastery
So, I’ve gotta tell you about a fantastic new collection of previously unreleased songs from Ric Hordinski‘s monastery studio… Notes from the Monastery. It ships December 18th, and with the pre-order you get an immediate 320kbps mp3 download of it. It has new songs by Ric Hordinski (aka Monk), Over the Rhine, Ellery, singer-songwriters Kim Taylor and Sarah Masen, a great new instrumental piece by guitarist Phil Keaggy, et cetera…
http://richordinski.portmerch.com/stores/product.php?productid=17109
Track Listing:
- With Me Tonight (Ellery)
- I Used to Know (Sarah Masen)
- Hard Times (Over the Rhine)
- Rabbit (Harrod and Funck)
- Clover (Kim Taylor)
- Always Right (David Wilcox)
- Hopscotch (Phil Keaggy)
- Bella Luna (2K9) (Venus Hum)
- Yesu Bhajan (Aradhna)
- Villainous Company (Ric Hordinski)
MP3 Bonus Track: Flown Free (Over the Rhine)
I’ve been a fan of Ric Hordinski for a long time. Ric (pronounced “Rich”) was a founding member of Cincinnati band Over the Rhine. When he left Over the Rhine, he went on to make some gorgeous music via his creative outlet called MONK. The mostly instrumental affairs hit the spot on a great fall or winter day – sipping your favorite warm beverage and chillin’ with loved ones (or a loved pup). :) Ric has moved lately to more of a producer / studio expert… and the above songs are unique glimpses of his varied studio work (all previously unreleased by the artists).
I’d highly recommend the above Notes from the Monastery… and check out some of Ric’s other work (all kind of harder to find now except the more recent ones: The Silent of Everything Yearned For and When I Consider How My Light Is Spent). Anyway, here is his key discography in reverse order…
(easier to find)
(harder to find)
If you can dig up the O -EP- on eBay, I’d also recommend it. I got it hot off the presses… and I ain’t lettin’ mine go. :) Oh, and yeah, searching for Ric’s Monk CDs on eBay is really difficult due to a certain Thelonious Sphere Monk who may have released a few albums. Just a few… happy hunting!!
Anyway, I get hundreds of records a year, and I don’t specifically blog about all of them (this is more of a news and concert reviews blog). That should clue you in that this new Ric Hordinski compilation is a special one… go get it.
~Dan – np: RAZR13 w/ Doug Pinnick – RAZR 13 
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from the liner notes…
“A famous film maker once said “Movies are never finished, they just escape.” Certainly, it’s true for recordings as well. It would embarrass me to tell you how often I’ve repeated that quote in this little room with the tattered stained-glass windows. I imagine the conversations that happened in here in the distant past. I picture a kind man comforting the bereaved, counseling engaged couples, giving stern talks to wayward pupils… Because, you see, my recording studio spent its first hundred years as a church. The studio’s Control Room used to serve as the Pastor’s Office.
The cd that you’re holding in your hands is a kind of stock ticket. You have just made a small but significant investment in the future of this charmingly decrepit neighborhood called Walnut Hills. This former church building (“The Monastery”) takes up the full end of a city block; thousands of people drive by here every day. The vast majority of the time she splits her sides with music. But she loves to moonlight: sometimes she’s a community center where neighborhood kids put on a Christmas pageant, sometimes we use the larger of the two sanctuaries to store furniture for people moving to better digs, other nights it’s a concert venue. Most Monday nights a local non-profit has dinner here for about 40 folks from the surrounding few blocks. She gets around, but she’s not cheap. Actually, the money you spent on this CD will help pay for continuing renovations. Think of it as a subtle act of architectural resurrection; recontructive surgery for the soul. Every artist on this disc has donated a piece of music, a block of their time, a tiny shining sliver of their life, kindly offered up to make this possible. It humbles me. Looking back over the list, it’s hard to imagine a little kid from Willoughby Hills making friends with the Talented and the Beautiful, but somehow it has happened. And it happens. And I give glad thanks for it-for a lifetime lived in music, among good people, all around the world.
To everyone who gave music for this project, thank you. To those of you who have listened over the years, thank you. The best is yet to come. I promise.”
Great stuff, Dan. I ordered mine today.