“Mixing bits of this and that from various areas of life to make something that did not exist before is an oddly hopeful endeavour.” This sentiment from Donald Barthelme was taken to heart by Benedict Kupstas for Ginkgo, the third Field Guides album set for release this summer on Whatever’s Clever Records. Following on from 2019’s This is Just a Place, the record sees Kupstas reach in all directions for inspiration, with the natural world, the written word and personal experience all informing its poetic and nuanced style. An array of guest talent furthers this creative melting pot, with Dave Scanlon, Nico Hedley, Dan Knishkowy, Cf Watkins and others bringing their own sensibilities to Ginkgo‘s layered sound.
The result is a collection of songs which rewards close and repeated listens, born in one man’s vision and realised within a community of collaboration. A record of turmoil, fear and unease that seeks wonder not via some great transcendence but rather what already lies near. The people and places, the environments right there beneath our feet. Kupstas identifies as “the feeling of being unmoored from the familiar” as one central to Ginkgo, but this does not indicate a remove or escape from the everyday. Rather, it takes inspiration from Barthelme in its commitment to the ordinary. A refusal to accept ordinary as ordinary at all. Attempting to not just represent the world, but show it to us anew.
Lead single ‘Salmon Skin’ serves as an entry point for this endeavour. A song full of the layered allusions and synchronicities which mark the record, drawing lines between seemingly unconnected things to trace the edges of feelings which might otherwise be too large or unwieldy to properly convey. “‘[The track] was mostly written while I was in Lebanon a few years ago, volunteering with an NGO in the Bekaa Valley,” Kupstas explains:
It was an intense time. I was corresponding with Alena Spanger (longtime collaborator), who was in California at the time, getting lost in coves. I was spending my breaks sitting in a sort of grotto on the grounds of a very old monastery, where a mangey feral cat would sit on my lap. The geographical and psychic displacements felt a bit surreal. And I found some sort of parallel correspondence between salmon and spiders. I had been in the process of moving to Switzerland, but feeling extremely conflicted about the prospect, and lots of things were unraveling, dizzying forks in the road. That’s what that song grew out of.
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‘Salmon Skin’ also comes with a video directed by Tyler Rai and Kupstas himself, filmed by Sarah Lass and edited by Nina Vroemen. Check it out below:
Gingko is out on the 24th June via Whatever’s Clever and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.
Photo by Dave Scanlon