lavender tea melted my alienation

Yasuaki Shimizu - Umi No Ue Kara

https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/7038634357-19th-october-2022

7038634357 NTS Radio 19th October 2022

The Memory of Rain on an April Afternoon

Roberto Musci - Claudia, Wilhem R. And Me (02:57)

From the album Anne.  Available November 16, 2018 from Western Vinyl.

Bandcamp https://josephshabason.bandcamp.com/album/anne
iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/anne/1427808233?ls=1&app=itunes
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/19FD6RN5K3xYFThAHM4fGy?si=0hUO0rFVQAigvSPTvJL_4w
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv182

Joseph Shabason
Twitter https://twitter.com/JosephShabason
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/josephshabason/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/josephshabason

Anne, the second album By Toronto saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason, is a tonal essay on degenerative illness. Delicately and compassionately woven with interviews of Shabason’s mother from whom the album takes its name, Anne finds its creator navigating a labyrinth of subtle and tragic emotions arising from his mother's struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Across the nine vivid postcards of jazz-laden ambience that comprise the album, Shabason unwraps these difficult themes with great care and focus revealing the unseen aspects of degenerative diseases that force us to re-examine common notions of self, identity, and mortality. 

Shabason’s uncanny ability to manoeuvre through such microscopic feelings is mirrored by his capacity to execute a similar tightrope-walk through musical genres. His music occupies a specific space that is as palpable as it is difficult to pin labels to. On Anne’s second track “Deep Dark Divide” rays of effected saxophone shine behind clouds of digital synthesizer that echoes the sound of jazz in the late 80s, but with a Jon Hassell-esque depth of sensibility that consciously subverts the stylistic inoffensiveness of that era. There is detail and idiosyncrasy beneath Shabason’s dawn-of-the-CD-era sheen that elevates the album far beyond a mere aesthetic exercise.

Still, the sounds on Anne are not so experimentally opaque as to stand in the way of the album’s through-line of sincerity and emotionality. When dissonance is employed it is punctual and meaningful, like on album-middler “Fred and Lil” where a six-minute cascade of breathy textures builds suddenly to an agitated growl, only to abruptly give way to Anne Shabason speaking intimately about her relationship to her own parents. Snippets of such conversations see her taking on something like a narrator role across Anne while the sound of her voice itself is sometimes effected to become a musical texture entwined into the fabric of the songs without always being present or audible.  The subsequent piece “Toh Koh” then drifts into playful disorientation as a lone female voice echoes the two syllables of the title, recalling the vocal techniques of composer Joan La Barbara, or even the light-hearted mantras of Lucky Dragons. From here the album veers back onto its aesthetic thoroughfare with “November” where Shabason lays muted brass textures atop a wavepool of electric chords provided by none other than the ambient cult-hero Gigi Masin, one of Anne’s many integral collaborators.

The serene tragedy of the album distils itself gracefully into the ironically titled album closer “Treat it Like a Wine Bar” wherein flutters of piano and mournfully whispered woodwinds seem to evaporate particle by delicate particle, leaving the listener with a faint emotional afterglow like a dream upon waking. There is a corollary to be drawn here with what it must be like to feel one’s own mind and body drift away slowly until nothing remains, while the collection of memories and abilities that we use to denote the “self” softens into eternity. On Anne, it is precisely this fragile exchange of tranquillity and anguish that Joseph Shabason has proven his singular ability to articulate.

Anne

Joseph Shabason - "Forest Run"

"Görünmez Hava" is the first track taken from Anadol's "Uzun Havalar".

We feel honoured to release this extraordinary beautiful music on vinyl. Release date is May 17, pre-order is up: https://anadol.bandcamp.com/

Now do yourself a favour and buy this record!

Anadol (@altinkasetcilik) is a psychedelic synth folk project by Gözen Atila, a Turkish sound artist and photographer based in Berlin. Her third album Uzun Havalar is based on collective improvisations of middle eastern folk songs called „uzun hava“. They turn out as rich, atmospheric synth ballads. A diverse roster of improvising musicians creates their fascinating complexity. Anadol recorded them during extensive sessions in Istanbul. You can hear drummers laughing and playing guitars, composers howling, announcements in French and screams in no language, record collectors playing oscillators, and trumpets through spacious echoes.
Anadol represents Gözen Atila’s liberation from a rather academic approach to electronic composition which she pursued during her music technology studies in Istanbul. She calls her education the „darkness of serious music“ where she first tried to belong, then to break free with the help of lo-fi synth pop. As a producer of radio plays and an expert field recording artist, she has developed a distinct sense of timing, editing and sound design. Her Anadol project walks in the footsteps of lone synth experimentalists like Bruce Haack and The Space Lady with their childlike curiosity for electronic sounds, pushing the boundaries of minimal equipment. On Uzun Havalar she translates her experimental background into these floating folk ballads.

Uzun Havalar

Görünmez Hava

Buy LP/digital album

A1 Anadol - Görünmez Hava [Pingipung 065/KS04]

I attempt to capture the essence of place, time and environment through textured sounds. Most of my pieces are derived from memories and reminiscence and try to recreate that experience, or at least the imagined memory and feelings evoked.

The Memory of Rain on an April Afternoon

ideasman