music
A whole new branch—a whole new forest!—of my music has been growing out of the vibrating body of a 12-string guitar modified with electronics by my son Kenji Garland. During the last couple of years I’ve been cultivating this forest, and my four-hour album Verdancy is available on my own Tall Owl Audio label. Critic Steve Smith provides some good background on the project on National Sawdust Log. Verdancy is available for purchase on Bandcamp, and you can learn more here.
“David Garland has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary composers. Like many great songwriters before him, he pushes the limits of acceptable harmony and dissonance, yet never at the expense of beauty. He is able to take the listener through what might otherwise be quite perplexing musical architecture, and guide them along as if floating effortlessly on a cloud. The fact that Garland is not more known is an indication that much of the world has forgotten why it is we make and listen to music in the first place. If it’s not possible for popular music to reach the heights of the great classical masters, it seems no one has told David Garland.“
—Sean Ono Lennon
“[David Garland’s music] was a big help for me in trying to formulate my own song style, just as Deerhoof was about to start.”
—Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier
“Garland is a superb, crazily imaginative songwriter. Singing through a Fairlight CMI or banging on a piece of Styrofoam, he’ll sing about how insane the nightly news is, how painful true love is, how scary getting to know other people is, and it all quietly creeps up and hits you right where you live.”
—Kyle Gann, Village Voice
“Mr. Garland [is] an accomplished pop baritone and determinedly self-choreographed dancer… His lyrics mix droll directness and evocative ambiguity, and he sets them to catchy tunes. His persona — a fallible character trying to make sense of his life — is unpretentiously appealing.”
— New York Times
Vulneraries
“Beautiful, real, and attuned to spirit consciousness” — Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth
“Supremely beautiful” — Nico Muhly, composer
“buzzes with pastoral possibility, as if finger-style guitarist Robbie Basho took to some cosmic knob twiddling.” — Lars Gotrich, NPR Music
“rattling and experimental but also spacious and contemplative.” — Joseph Dalton, Times Union
“‘I Am the Whole Tree’ mourns as it moves through low-humming feedback and buzzing strings, processing sounds and emotion in heart-wrenching tandem.” — Lars Gotrich, NPR Music
“This paternal-filial dialogue is embodied by the duo’s innovatively enmeshed instrumentation: an acoustic 12-string guitar and modular synthesizer in complete attunement, both complementary and contrapuntal, in flux. Conjuring the spirit of their lost matriarch, their interlocutory peregrinations might be summoning sentient arboreal voices. Vol. 8 is sparer, more austerely arranged. Vol. 7 is lusher, the duo’s guitar-synth articulations embellished by woodwinds—clarinet, bass clarinet, flute—and bass. The two men evoke a dizzying range of musical voices, from the earthbound elegiac to the ecstatic empyrean.” — Michael Wiener, Chronogram
Garlands is the duo of David Garland and his son Kenji Garland. Vulnerary is an archaic term for a substance – such as herbs or, in this case, music – used to heal wounds. In the fall of 2018, Anne Garland, David’s wife and Kenji’s mother, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, which was understood to be terminal. Kenji moved in with his parents to help care for Anne, and David and Kenji played music together as a way to soothe Anne and themselves.
David writes, “the set-up Kenji and I use has the unique trait of being a tandem instrument. Through Kenji’s inventive modification, what I play with my hands on my 12-string guitar is processed and added to by his modular synthesizer, and those sounds go back into the body of the guitar provoking further resonances and vibrations which are further elaborated on by the synth, and that process continues, all of it vibrating the wood and wire of the guitar, making in that sense an acoustic event. Kenji and I simultaneously influence the timbres, textures, and tonality, and on top of that the guitar and synth have ideas of their own, in a sense, which we listen and respond to. Kenji’s inventive technical set-up makes the experience feel like inexplicable magic.” David also plays clarinet and bass clarinet on some pieces.
From Anne Garland’s liner notes to Vulneraries Vol. 2: “Soon after my diagnosis my husband and son started playing music together — in a kind of haunting duo / collaboration different from what they’d done before, making music of a sort that I had never heard. They set up nightly to record in the living room, just below the bedroom where I sleep. …I’ve spent the past few months floating and basking in the healing tones and textures of Vulneraries. I hope it is healing to you as well.”
recordings
You can listen to most of my albums right here, and buy them on Bandcamp.
The Spark
Tall Owl Audio, October 10, 2025
David Garland: vocals, modified 12-string guitar, guitar, prepared guitar (on These Days), bass guitar (on Despite Advances In the Field), clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, ocarinas, recorder, keyboard panpipe (Suzuki Andes), piano, Hammond Piper II organ, Pro-One analog synthesizer, Star Island pump organ, harmonium, percussion • Julian Lampert: double bass • Otto Hauser: drums • Diane Cluck: vocals on All With All • Kenji Garland: Garlands synth & guitar set-up on All With All, plus the modification of the modified 12-string guitar
Words and music by DG, except Mr. Dream by Ed Askew
“What is there to say after your partner dies? In my case I had a lot to express, but words weren’t always the best language. I made instrumental music, I made photographs of sunlight. I grieved, I existed, I took care of my cats. And, tricky thing, I stayed alive and had new experiences. My wife Anne died (cancer) six years ago, and that’s a significant period of time. Enough time to learn to walk and talk, if you started as a baby. For me, it was enough time to start dating, which may be more challenging than walking and talking.
“Songs have always been a special place for me to talk about stuff, because they can address, express, and imply so many things at once. Ideally a song creates a poetic situation in which meanings bounce off one another, accumulating in a reverberence that coheres to the listener’s contours.
“The Spark features hand-played instruments, which is a priority for me. Humanity, real-world sonic textures, and poetic insights are further priorities. Except for one cover song (Mr. Dream, by the late Ed Askew, who’s someone I knew and championed on my WNYC radio show Spinning On Air) all music and lyrics are by me. The songs are generally about navigating my life as a widower at age 70, but also I feel they’re in a continuum with the songs I’ve been writing since I was in my 20s.”
— David Garland, August, 2025
Noise In You (new version)
Tall Owl Audio, 2024
David Garland: vocals, 12-string guitar, acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic and electric bass guitar, flute, clarinet, pocket clarinet, recorder, piano, reed organ, banjo, bowed psaltery, rebec, bul-bul, mandolin, xylophone, percussion, contraption, etc. • Sufjan Stevens: vocals, oboe • Mira Romantschuk: vocals • Diane Cluck: vocals • Brendon Massei (Viking Moses): vocals • Dave Deporis: vocals and acoustic guitar • Greg Saunier: drums • Liam Hofmann: sarode • Kenji Garland: backing vocals, electric bass, electric guitar, Max MSP patches • Anne Garland: backing vocals
“One possible advantage to being an obscure artist is the absence of outside expectations. My 2007 album Noise In You wasn’t widely heard, so I don’t imagine there’s an audience that considers it sacrosanct. So in 2024 I felt free to continue my work on a couple songs, while also working on various other, new projects. I was happy with the results, and in January gave myself the month to address the full album. One rule I gave myself was to not redo any vocals. Most songs aren’t changed a lot, just focused. Adding bass was fun, filling in that previously empty frequency, and clarifying harmonies. I refer to this new version as “mixed anew,” rather than re-mixed — a term which would imply a greater transformation. If these songs were people on stage, they’re now better lit, and I’m pleased to see them more clearly.”
Flowering Flows
Tall Owl Audio, 2023
David Garland: modified 12-string guitar
Flowering Flows is a double album featuring two multi-movement pieces for vibrating strings: String Flow 1, and String Flow 2. The only instrument used is a modified 12-string acoustic guitar created by Kenji Garland, the composer’s son. In the recording the guitar is layered through multi-tracking. The guitar is battery powered, but it is an acoustic instrument. Like a violin or piano the sound is manifested in vibrating wood and wire, and must be recorded with microphones. These real-world vibrations are important to Garland in principle as someone who prefers to work with acoustic rather than digitally produced sound, and they are essential to the throbbing interaction of the strings which is the soul of this music.
“Pieces build from silence into multi-tracked layers of pure—and not-so-pure—overtone-rich drones that suggest several early Eliane Radigue electronic works overlaid, although Garland is realizing his sonic architectures acoustically. Sideband melodies abound, harmonies both wide and a semitone or less apart convey a sense of form that’s both monumental and intimate. Pieces like Undiminished Gift roar with a thick, enigmatic, and almost metallic intensity. Austere on the surface, Garland’s ecstatic textural explorations on Flowering Flows are as dense, exquisitely beautiful, and occasionally treacherous as a teeming rainforest.” — James Keepnews, Chronogram
Tactility
Tall Owl Audio, 2022
David Garland: piano, modified 12-string guitar, clarinets, bass clarinets, flute, harmonium, glockenspiels • Kenji Garland: modular synthesizer interacting with 12-string guitar on “Materials and Proportions”
“After moving from the city to the country about ten years ago, I was inspired to start using photography as a means of tuning in to nature. Since my wife Anne’s death in 2019 I’ve explored photography in an experimental way, and some months ago I also began making pottery. I’ve been doing these things intensively, and the activities sustain me. And often what sustains those activities is music.
“As I make stuff, accompanied by music, I’ve felt very grateful to all the composers and musicians over the centuries who have created music that energizes, or soothes, or offers space for thought. So I wanted to create music that might do those three things at once. For my energizing/ambient/spirit-nourishing music, my goals were a sense of momentum, warm tonality, unhurried pace, curiosity, texture, and tactility.”
Verdancy
Tall Owl Audio, 2018
David Garland: music, lyrics, vocals, arrangements, modified 12-string guitar, clarinet, flutes, piano, bowed psaltery, etc. • Iva Bittová: vocal and violin • Yoko Ono: words and voice • Julian Lampert: double bass • Arone Dyer: vocal • Robin Dann: vocal • Steve Gorn: bansuri flute • Adam Pierce: drums • Otto Hauser: percussion • Christine Gummere: cello • Jonathan Talbott: viola • Kyle Gann: piano • Jared Samuel: vocal
“A profoundly coherent and surprising world of immersive sound…the sound of the composer acknowledging and undoing centuries of accumulated tradition and culture to get back to something close to pure music and first mind…nothing less than a new world of revelatory music.” —John Burdick, Hudson Valley One
“Lovely, lush, beautiful…Sparkling and weird at the same time; and I love it so much!” —Irene Trudel, WFMU
“Verdancy is a staggering, shape-shifting, four-hour journey…a deep dive that goes against everything we’ve been told about how the overwhelming digital age intake of music is supposed to work, but Garland did it anyway. It’s a bold artistic statement that’s quixotic and rewarding in equal measure.” —Jim Allen, Album of the Day, Bandcamp Daily
Conversations with the Cinnamon Skeleton
released 2012
David Garland: music, lyrics, vocals, string arrangements, 12-string guitar, drone-modified 12-string guitar, clarinet, flute, piano, Dulcitone, bass, etc. • Vashti Bunyan: vocals • Sean Lennon: vocals, electric guitar, drums • Charlotte Kemp Muhl: vocals, accordion • Osso (Rob Moose, Olivier Manchon, Marla Hansen, Maria Bella Jeffers): strings • Otto Hauser: drums • Kenji Garland: acoustic feedback guitar, inventor/builder of the drone-modified 12-string guitar • The Garland family chorus
“Witty, melancholy songs, arranged and performed with such careful skill and a natural unforced originality; David Garland and his friends have done it again!”
— Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine, etc., etc.)
“‘Conversations with the Cinnamon Skeleton‘ makes use of its components the way a gallery shows its works: sounds, words, instruments and guest musicians each feature as distinct and respected pieces. Woven together, these varied parts form hued structural songs that refigure the experimental New York sound into songs that have a sleeves-up accessibility. Garland’s baritone is a compassionate guide that accompanies listeners through studied verses into addictive choruses…This confidence to combine the avant garde with everyday musical tactics reflects Garland’s engaged knowledge of both underground and aboveground music scenes.”
— Alex Gallacher, Folk Radio UK
Noise In You
Family Vineyard, 2007
David Garland: vocals, 12-string guitar, acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic and electric bass guitar, flute, clarinet, pocket clarinet, recorder, piano, reed organ, banjo, bowed psaltery, rebec, bul-bul, mandolin, xylophone, percussion, contraption, etc. • Sufjan Stevens: vocals, oboe • Mira Romantschuk: vocals • Diane Cluck: vocals • Brendon Massei (Viking Moses): vocals • Dave Deporis: vocals and acoustic guitar • Greg Saunier: drums • Liam Hofmann: sarode • Kenji Garland: backing vocals, electric bass, electric guitar, Max MSP patches • Anne Garland: backing vocals
“Garland’s new album is a tour de force. When is the last time you listened to a record that rendered subject matter such as dioramas, pyschoarchitecture, the typographic landscape of comic strips, anthropomorphizing of time, and one of the hottest choruses ever constructed solely from the names of clouds…with elegance and ornate beauty? Well, for us here at Asthmatic Kitty, even our collective music nerd ears haven’t ever heard anything like this. … we think the album is a thing of strange beauty that should heard by many.”
—Asthmatic Kitty
On the Other Side of the Window
Review Records, 2003
David Garland: vocals, acoustic and electric bass guitar, piano, vibraphone, acoustic and electric guitar, flutes, chord harmonica, analog synth, accordion, bowed psaltery, percussion, drums, Taliesen quartzite, branches, etc. • Karen Mantler: vocal and harmonica • Michael “Sport” Murphy: vocal, lyrics, backup vocal • Meredith Yayanos: violin; vocal melismas • Ron Horton: trumpet and flugelhorn • Anne Garland, Kenji Garland, John Michael Riley, Aurelia Riley: chorus • Mark Abbott, Chris Abbott, Brooke Abbott, Nigel Rollings, Carol Murikami, Rob Schwimmer, Marty Cutler, Cinnie Cole, Meredith Yayanos, Anne Garland, Kenji Garland: singing friends • The Four Bags: special guests in the background
“‘On the Other Side of the Window’ is lovely, a great surprise—I recommend it. Don’t think you know what it is until you’ve heard it. It’ll make you feel good, this I guarantee.”
—Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine, Matching Mole, etc.)
“He sings about the search for comfort, but the songs are restless and exploratory, an impression reinforced by his ambitious harmonic ideas. … Garland wants to kick the pop song out of bed, then take it uptown to a museum and downtown to an avant garde club.”
—Clive Bell, The Wire
My Vortex Camera
Review Records, 2000
Gently re-mastered in 2011
David Garland: vocals, bass guitar, flute, psaltery & recorder, toy piano, guitar, accordion • Brian Dewan: electric zither, autoharp, taisho koto, accordion • Will Holshouser: accordion • Fay Lovsky: theremin on one song • Kenji Garland: vocals on one song
“My Vortex Camera … was a shock: the hair-raising discovery of a songwriter alone in his kingdom, freed completely of servitude to pop-rock and detached from the traditional frames (blues, country, folk) onto which so many his countrymen still stick their writing. Shaded by an accordion, an electric zither, a flute, a bass, a toy piano, a theremin or a very discreet guitar, the undefinable songs of My Vortex Camera bear the stamp of a musician whose ears are open and keen, songs which manage to be of a profound peculiarity without systematically playing the card of oddness.”
—Richard Robert, Les Inrockuptibles (translated from French)
Togetherness
Ergodic Records 1999, gently re-mastered in 2010.
Cover art by Richard M. Powers, painted in about 1955.
David Garland: vocals, acoustic and electric keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, accordion, vibraphone, flute, theremin, bowed saw, rebec, whistling, ocarina, percussion • Guy Klucevsek: accordion • Kate Light: violin • Bobby Previte: drums • Brian Dewan: electric zither • John Zorn: alto sax • Mark Dresser: double bass • Jim Staley: trombones • Carl Parens: cello • Anne Garland: vocals • Kenji Garland: vocals
[rated “A”] “Richly detailed and elegantly produced … Underlying it all is a deep compassion for the daily sadness of being human, couched in a comforting voice that can sustain a low B-flat below the clef like it’s no big deal.”
—Village Voice
“Togetherness is a disc of ideal proportions, a perfectly blended synthesis that one can consider Garland’s masterpiece.”
—Richard Robert, Les Inrockuptibles
Control Songs
Review Records, 1986
David Garland: vocals, acoustic and electric keyboards, electric guitar, bass, accordion, Synthabbott, flutes, bowed psaltery, ocarina, percussion, lamp, and chair • Guy Klucevsek: accordion • Mark Abbott: bass guitar • John Zorn: alto sax • Christian Marclay: turntables • Clive Smith: trumpet • Meredith Monk: vocals • Anne Garland: vocals • John Alexander, Wayne Diana, and Nancy Gassner: vocals
“David Garland’s Control Songs are now digital, signaling (one wishes) the return to public consciousness of the best songwriter of my generation, bar none. Filled with remarkable poetry of both words and notes, the songs draw humorously unsentimental insights into the realities of emotional life.”
—Kyle Gann, Village Voice
“Every song offers new delights.”
—Keyboard Magazine
The Worlds of Love
Review Records LP, 1989.
CD released December, 2000, with bonus tracks.
Cover art by David Garland
The Worlds of Love, a group consisting of Cinnie Cole: vocals, banjo, synthesizer • David Garland: vocals, synthesizers, accordion, bass guitar, flutes, melodica, theremin, toy piano, percussion, vibrolute • Ikue Mori: vocals, hand-played drum machines, powerbook, percussion
“The songs on the album work as adult, if weird, love songs. They’re funny, a reimagining of Weill, children’s songs and pop, all processed through a synthesizer swirl and informed with free improvisation…. [Worlds of Love is] an act of reclamation, mixing pop music with noise and turning them into something new.”
—Peter Watrous, New York Times
“[The Worlds of Love] creates an ingratiating digital-folk-love-song tradition I can’t hear often enough. Garland is somehow both mild-mannered and totally uninhibited, Cinnie Cole is homey, and the electronic/banjo arrangements (very well recorded) are funky enough to chase away self-pity.”
—Village Voice
I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times
David Garland performs Brian Wilson
MSI, released in Japan only, 1993
Cover art by Rodney Alan Greenblat
David Garland: voice, piano, DX7II, accordion, pro-one, guitar, flute, acoustic percussion • Ikue Mori: voice, electronic percussion • Cinnie Cole: voice, banjo • Gene Bryan Johnson: voice • Chris Cochrane: electric guitar and voice • Anne Garland: voice • Kenji Garland: voice • All string parts played by members of the Akoshia String Quartet: Kate Light, Diane Bruce, Leslie Tomkins, and Allen Whear.
“Not only do Wilson’s slight, lugubrious tunes hold up to all the serious, chamber-style treatment…, but many are actually better for the wear. Predictably, Garland doesn’t miss the chance to resurrect some obscure numbers…. But the biggest surprise is the title cut. With its blaring, calliope rhythms, counterpoint vocals on the bridge to the chorus, and Garland’s friendly baritone throughout, the song is transformed from a maudlin whine about arrested social development to a spirited celebration of weirdness.”
—Option
Reveal
limited edition CD, 2006
David Garland: vocals and 12-string guitar
Limited edition (300 copies) CD in hand-made packaging. From the liner notes: “Over the years I’ve organized many ensembles of unusual instruments to play my music, but recently I’ve been inspired by some of the wonderful guests on my radio show Spinning On Air to see what might happen if I perform my unconventional songs conventionally. On this recording I present my newly devised, innovative performance format: guy with guitar … ”
This album features songs by David Garland, plus the first-ever cover version of “One By One” by Connie Converse.
Time Out of Joint
Music for Modified Guitar
Digital only, free download via Bandcamp, 2014
David Garland: modified 12-string guitar
Three improvised pieces on an acoustic 12-string guitar that has been modified with electronics by Kenji Garland. The music was quickly recorded and immediately released.
Long Song
CDR, 2007 (limited edition)
3-D blue and red anaglyph glasses included
cover art by David Garland
David Garland: voice, bowed psaltery, soprano and tenor recorders • Sally Swisher: voice • Larry Lewis: banjo • Paul Henle: marimba • Paul Galasso: cello
Recorded June 7, 1981, at The Kitchen, 484 Broome Street, NYC
From the liner notes: “Long Song” is a buoyant bit of folk-minimalism. It lives up to its title not by having a lot of lyrics, but by putting its few lyrics through a lot of permutations. I wrote it in 1979. I wanted to stretch my ability to create a long, integrated composition, and to explore a blend of simplicity and complexity. A little, one minute-long sketch for the piece was released on the memorably named “Just Another Asshole” compilation album of 1981, curated by Barbara Ess and Glenn Branca. This is the whole 14 minute-long piece … “Long Song” was first performed in 1979 in a Soho loft a few floors above the old Broome Street location of The Kitchen Center in New York City. In 1981 I rearranged it for a performance at The Kitchen itself, featuring the ensemble recorded here.
© david garland