Jane Weaver
Intiaani Kesä
DIM008

Originally commissioned as incidental cues for a short film by Helsinki based designer Paola Suhonen, Intiaani Kesä (Indian Summer) by multi-instrumentalist Jane Weaver has since grown into a fully formed project lending itself to a number of further cinematic productions and creative applications . Appearing alongside Demdike Stare and Brigitte Fontaine in the vampire film Kiss Of The Damned by Xan (daughter of John) Cassevetes and recut and performed as an alternative rescore to Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna Of Sadness for various live performances, this set of well-crafted themes takes it's brazen influences of Nicolai, Dell'Orso, Alessandroni and Daniella Casa back to their purest analog recording origins with startling effect. Recorded in an old vicarage near the Peak District, housing a unique analogue experimental studio, Intiaani Kesä hears Weaver deploy a wide range of instruments including tubular bells, bowed guitars, vintage Goblinised Roland string synths, detuned pianos, church bells, Roland guitar synths, harpsichords and ex-Radiophonic Workshop custom equipment as accompaniment to wordless and onomatopoeic chorale vocals recorded on valve microphones with space echo, sonic room reverbs and bespoke experimental tape delays. Made in a disciplined and unforgiving environment without modern technological shortcuts these self-initiated creative research prototypes were not initially intended for commercial release but are thankfully gathered here as songs in there own right independent of context.

Jane Weaver - Parade Of The Blood Red Sorrows

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

mystery Girl

(AI Generated Love Songs)

There’s a silence after thunder,
A calm that holds the pain,
Like petals falling slowly
In the hush between the rain.

Every joy I’ve ever tasted
Was wrapped in something blue,
A touch of loss, a quiet ache,
That made it feel more true.

We chase the light, we may fear the night,
But they’re one and the same.
Without the dark, we’d never see at all
The stars that spell our name.

Even in the shadows, beauty breathes and breaks,
Loss will find us anyway, no matter what we take.
But still, I choose compassion, still I choose to stay—
To hold a trembling hand and love the ache away.

I’ve seen laughter through the teardrops,
Heard a song in a lamentful sigh,
Watched hope bloom in quiet ruins
When there was no reason why.

We are threads in one great fabric,
Woven light and woven pain,
Each goodbye, each gentle gesture,
Like sunshine in the rain.

So don’t be afraid to feel it all—
The sorrow and the grace.
Let heartbreak be the artist
That softens up your face.

Let your courage be the kindness
You give without a name,
For love that lives in darkness
Is just as bright a flame.

Even in the shadows, beauty breathes and breaks,
Loss will find us anyway, no matter what we take.
But still, I choose compassion, still I choose to stay—
To hold a trembling hand and love the ache away.

We’re made of night and morning,
Of endings and of starts—
So be brave with all your loving,
Let it flood the broken parts.
Because even in the shadows,
There’s light enough for every heart.

Even In The Shadows

from 'Blossoms In Red' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den243
available in October on all formats at [http://denovali.com/ensembleeconomique]

Based in Californian Humboldt County, Brian Pyle wanders the world on his countless travels. Far from being restless, he has his very own Pylesque way of travelling. Much like a Lynchian version of Hemingway, he has an eye for the thin layer between restlessness and relaxation, gloom and serenity. Wherever he goes, he ardently absorbes these nuances, rarefies them and moulds them into a seamless array of glimmering styles, from drone and ambient to shoegaze and post-wave, giving birth to yet another creation of his prolific Ensemble Economique project.
On his by now eleventh album and fourth Denovali release "Blossoms In Red", Pyle combines and perfects elements of his previous output into a cohesive narrative. The opener "From The Train Window, Red Flowers On The Mountain" is a surprisingly scarce ambient piece, which feels like an almost infinitely stretched precious moment of time. Despite being austere, it is warm, sublime and incredibly captivating and after listening to its full 8 minutes, one cannot help but to rewind and replay. Having barely escaped this seductively infinite loop, one encounters the title track "Blossoms In Red" featuring Portland electronic duo Soft Metals. Starting off with a characteristic sluggish programmed beat, one is immediately overpowered by the onset of the towering combination of a warm bassline and a shimmering synth ambience. As the track flows, these elements writhe around each other in a delicately beautiful fashion, absorbing the materialising wailing guitar which almost sounds like an ethereal voice, as well as the occasional melodic and rhythmic accents. The next track sees this guitar return in a rather pure form. "On The Sand", featuring jack-of-all-trades Peter Broderick, is essentially just reduced analogue drums, electric guitar, a simple vibrating bassline and hoarse almost spoken vocals. Slowly and methodically, these constituents form a captivating erotic ritual, much like a beguiling and hypnotic mandala procession of imperturbable blissful individuals on the beach. As proven on numerous occasions, Pyle can easily lead all his trumps in the presence of female lead vocals, and "Blossoms In Red" makes no exception. Indeed, "You, By Candlelight" is easily the best Ensemble Economique track with female vox to date. Pyle manages to embed the vocals just in the right minimal amount of instrumental layers, making the track radiate an elusive tranquility. The fifth and closing track "Nothing Is Perfect" is a classically tinged piano piece with only very little processing and sparse field recording samples. With all pieces of the album, Pyle manages to create tracks which feel like being composed only of two or three layers of sound, that are nevertheless allowed to develop a life cycle which seems incredibly long - track lengths vary from 6:30 to 8:10 - but still feels just right. Thus "Blossoms In Red" is probably Ensemble Economique's most minimalistic album, but at the same time - or maybe just for this reason - his most skilled work.

Blossoms In Red

Preorder / Buy

Ensemble Economique - You, By Candlelight (feat. J Moon)

Fire! - She Owned His Voice

Taken from 'At The Dam' LP by Mary Lattimore, out March 4, 2016.

Order at The Ghostly Store: http://www.theghostlystore.com/collections/music/products/at-the-dam
Or at the retailer of your choice: https://ghostly.lnk.to/mary-lattimore-atthedam

At The Dam

Mary Lattimore - The Quiet At Night

EGYPTOLOGY "Sur Les Autres Mondes" (LP/DL)
Release date: 23rd March 2018

Cat.#: HITD 036
All tracks composed, performed & recorded by Stéphane Laporte & Olivier Lamm
Mixing @ Red Bull Studio, Paris
Mastering by Mike Grinser @ Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin
Images by Lucien Rudaux
Layout by Jean-Philippe Bretin

Label, orders: www.handsinthedarkrecords.com

EGYPTOLOGY - Wunder Der Schöpfung (Merveilles de la Création)

from the album 'semblance' available on kranky 07/20

Semblance

forma 'three-two'

From the album A Separation Of Being by JOYFULTALK

JOYFULTALK
A Separation Of Being
180gLP/CD/DL
CST150

cstrecords.com/cst150

Mark Fry - Aeroplanes

Second Language Music

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