From the album, 'South Wind,Clear Sky,' out now on Second Language Music.  www.secondlanguagemusic.com

Perhaps still most widely recognised for Dreaming With Alice, his 1972 psych-folk debut for RCA Italy as a 19-year-old art student-troubadour, Mark Fry has been turning his creative gaze on the world, and alchemising its elements into shimmering, quietly visionary works of art, ever since. Certainly not an artist who dances to the music of time in any conventional sense, Mark, a respected, and collected, painter, most often to be found holed up in his Normandy farmhouse studio, allowed more than three decades to glide by before recording Alice’s follow up, 2008’s Shooting The Moon. His subsequent musical activity has been frenetic by comparison.

Mark’s beguiling, Arcadian-flavoured 2011 Second Language album, I Lived In Trees, recorded in collaboration with The A. Lords – musicians from a more recent generation of psychedelic-folk experimenters – proved a major critical hit, demonstrating that Mark Fry’s musical stock lay not only in the Paisley-hued haze of his Aquarian Age youth, but also in the full glare of the postmodern, internet-facilitated present. A series of concerts in Japan and Scandinavia, and a widely reported ‘supergroup’ London showcase, featuring members of Mercury Rev, Super Furry Animals, Tunng and Lemon Jelly, further evinced the subtle but inexorable diffusion of the Mark Fry legend, something abetted by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme airing an interview with Mark in the wake of Trees’ release.

All of which brings us to Mark Fry’s latest, most exquisitely realised musical offering to date, South Wind, Clear Sky. Sung with that now familiar alloy of cool restraint and wondering innocence, and passingly reminiscent of the kind of English pastoralism associated with the likes of Kevin Ayers or Bill Fay, the album’s leanly arranged yet immersive songs are propelled by Mark’s glinting, plangent guitars and deliciously embroidered by John Parker’s double bass, Angèle David-Guillou’s piano and backing vocals and Katie Lang’s French horn, all bound together by producer Guy Fixsen (My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab) into a delightfully iridescent whole. For all its finely honed arrangements, and the translucence of its recording, South Wind, Clear Sky is still very much the work of the man who made Dreaming With Alice; the mature Mark Fry’s feeling for wonderment and magic, for the dreamlike and the innocently surreal, is just as pervasive, and persuasive here, only more focused, and etched against a more luminous, even heavenly canvas.

Where the lyrics on his last album found Mark reaching up through the summer branches toward an azure sky, here that celestial dimension provides the focus for eight shimmering chamber-folk essays whose wistful narratives of flight and fancy and empyrean romance purr and soar with a stately grace, like the ‘Aeroplanes’ of the album’s richly melodic opening track.


Mark Fry - Aeroplanes

AVEC LE SOLEIL SORTANT DE SA BOUCHE - 
"Face à l'instant, Part 2"

from 'Zubberdust', available 30 September 2014
http://cstrecords.com/cst106

Zubberdust!

Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche • "Face à l'instant, Part 2"

Support Fretwork! Buy their music!

http://www.fretwork.co.uk/

Fretwork Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582

live in maribor slovenia on our european tour 2015

pete wareham tenor sax
shabaka hutchings tenor sax
leafcutter john - electronics
tom herbert double bass
sebastian rochford - drums

WE FEEL THE ECHOES IN MARIBOR  SLOVENIA

From the album Modern Country, out now on Merge Records.

Modern Country

William Tyler "Gone Clear"

When Lali Puna released "Our Inventions" back in 2010, it was a long overdue return for the band; in fact, more than half a decade elapsed between the current LP and its predecessor. However, the Munich-based foursome now seems to want to make up for that, dropping this new EP in early 2012, at a point when "Our Inventions" is still lingering in the air. It's an afterburner of sorts, a remix addendum, an early continuation fittingly entitled "Silver Light".
Before singer Valerie Trebeljahr and her band mates officially hand over the original recordings, they set the tone with a beautifully rendered cover song: Lali Puna's take on Mort Garson's "I've Been Over The Rainbow", originally released on the LP "The Wozard Of Iz" (1968), a dark parody of the original "Wizard", sounds both forsaken and strangely welcoming as they venture deeper and deeper into the void that is to be found at the very core of this track. With this choice Lali Puna not only pay homage to the late-great moog master who died in 2008, but also present a song that works as a stunningly ruminative prelude to "Silver Light". 
It's obviously dark now, and the night is upon us: Cornelius' remix of "Hostile To Me" washes over the listener like a beautiful lullaby, it's soundscapes shimmering at sundown or night-fall, moments that do not sound hostile at all; instead, by combining multiple vocal parts Keigo Oyamada ultimately even manages to lift this track to almost ethereal heights – obviously something Lali Puna would never dare themselves. Since "Our Inventions" was heavily concerned with the downsides of progress, and posing questions about our constant need to stimulate growth, it's a logical step to present Trebeljahr's lyrics (such as "destroy this place") in this downshifted way. "Leave your signs on the wall", she sings, but these are signs that are no longer tangible; it's nothing but a last flicker in the darkness surrounding us. 
In Los Angeles it doesn't really get that dark; only in the hills, a place a certain Will Wiesenfeld aka Baths calls home. This Will not only has some amazing sideburns, but he's also the perfect guy to deliver a remix of a track like "Move On": Baths will always turn the original into something with a lot of oomph, even if it's just to get things moving in his hometown, the capital of heavy traffic and congestion. However, Baths and his whooshing, brainfeeding approach as a producer are not an unlikely choice for "Silver Light" – after all he's an artist hailing from the anticon. camp, and by now it's almost a tradition to collaborate with musicians from Munich or Weilheim. 
Finally, hailing from the same camp, there's Odd Nosdam, who just recently collaborated with Saroos: "Safe Tomorrow" done Nosdam style is another massive, broad expanse of sound; it's a new take with more internal pressure, even though ultimately, after more than six and a half minutes, he follows Trebeljahr's request to please "try to make it home by night". And it's true: Nighttime is certainly the best time of day to enjoy the silvery glow of this EP.

buy 

Lali Puna : i ve been over the rainbow (coverversion)

Angèle David-Guillou, fresh off the back of October’s 'En Mouvement' accompanying EP 'Mouvements Organiques', released in February, develops her compositional skills with ‘The Valley Of Detachment’ – a potent and formidable study in writing for the saxophone family.

Available physically as a special Record Store Day release in selected shops, and digitally from 4th May.

Angèle David-Guillou - The Valley Of Detachment

In a unique world premiere Efterklang and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Matthew Coorey performed the songs from Piramida - Efterklang´s 4th album - live in Sydney Opera House for the VIVID Live Festival 2012.

Piramida will be released in it´s studio album version on September 24th on 4AD
and Efterklang will go on tour with The Piramida Concert and perform with orchestras in Europe and NYC fall winter 2012.

For more info, pre-order, ticket links please visit WWW.EFTERKLANG.NET

The Ghost is written by Efterklang and arranged for orchestra by Missy Mazzoli.

Fretwork Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582

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