Kath Bloom & Loren Connors - Moonlight LP

Label: Chapter Music

The extraordinary creative partnership of New Haven, CT duo Kath Bloom and Loren Connors has haunted folk fans since the early 80s. Kath taught herself guitar during shifts as a janitor at a New Haven cemetery, while Loren's free-form style had been developing since the late '60s. Between 1981-84 the duo recorded six albums, most self-released in tiny quantities.

Early on, their music mixed folk and blues traditionals with a handful of Kath's vulnerable, moving originals. By the later albums the songs were all Kath's – her fragile voice and subdued finger-picking set against Loren's abstract but always supportive playing. Together the duo created a sound almost impossibly emotional and haunting.

Moonlight emerged as the duo's final album in 1984, in an edition of 200-300 copies. As her creativity accelerated, Kath's songs became looser and more intuitive, but Moonlight contains an early version of one of Kath's most beloved songs, "Come Here." Loren's longterm collaborator Robert Crotty contributes electric guitar to a couple of tracks.

After Moonlight, Kath did not release anything again until a 1993 solo cassette, but then developed a devoted cult following through the pivotal use of a re-recorded "Come Here" in Richard Linklater's 1995 film Before Sunrise. Kath has since released three solo albums on Chapter Music, as well as the tribute album Loving Takes This Course, featuring the likes of Bill Callahan, Mark Kozelek, Devendra Banhart and Josephine Foster. Loren also retreated from music for a period until re-emerging in the late 1980s. He is now recognised as a pioneering guitar explorer, and has worked with Thurston Moore, Keiji Haino and Jim O’Rourke.

Moonlight includes five digital-only bonus tracks of rare 1984 live recordings, as well as comprehensive digital liner notes.