Copeland’s main tool is a cello, which, with the help of a loop pedal, paints pictures that are vividly affecting. The music of Alder & Ash is strongly influenced by the natural world, and brings with it all of the beauty, complexity and horror that can be found in nature. As the bio on his Bandcamp page states, “Alder & Ash is a counterpoint of two extremes. The music lies in stillness, introversion, and penitence. It lies in violence, cacophony, and angst.”

The entirety of Clutched in the Maw of the World has this balanced atmosphere, from the quiet beginning of ‘The Merciless Dusk’, with its stark and sombre cello like a breeze on some distant North Sea shore, to the ominous ‘A Seat Amongst God and His Children’, which begins with vaguely martial percussion, joined soon by the same wheezing cello. But things take a turn for the strange before too long, the instrumentation blown-out and distorted, moving from ominous to downright unsettling, like the manic brain patterns of some volatile and war-crazed leader.

This is a recurring pattern with Alder & Ash. Like much of the Lost Tribe catalogue, their music is undeniably atmospheric, with a widescreen, cinematic feel, but this is not just some soundtrack to rugged vistas. Yes, on the surface it’s stark and elemental, as old as the landscapes that inspire it, but it becomes quickly apparent that it’s weirder than that. There are as many nods to experimental drone and doom metal as there are to classical convention. Think Warren Ellis meets Colin Stetson, beauty and abrasion laying side by side. This is neoclassical aimed through the prism of a fever dream, like an anthem for some ancient Nordic race.

‘The Great Plains of Dust’ is a great example of this, the reverberating march of its percussion like some terrible army approaching mirage-like on the horizon. This ominous pursuit falls away in the middle section, a period of quiet paranoia, the guitar a mere scorpion scuttle. ‘Seeds of a Sallow Earth’ is altogether more reserved, while ‘The Merciful Dawn’ winds and wends like a cool wind across a blue-grey morning. The final track ‘The Glisten, The Glow’ again lacks the harsher edges of some songs, instead closing proceedings with a sense of grandiose melancholy, like viewing a scene of apocalyptic ruin dappled in dewdrops and moonlight. It’s a fitting end to a big, complex and challenging album, one where wonder and dismay stand side by side, and where beauty is always present, even in the strangest and stormiest moments.

You can get Clutched in the Maw of the World via Lost Tribe Sound and from the Alder & Ash Bandcamp page. It’s available as a download or limited edition handcrafted CD, which can be bought in a bundle with the other Alder & Ash album, Psalms for the Surrender. If two albums aren’t enough, consider joining the Lost Tribe Sound subscription series, A Prelude to Decline, which will get you discounted prices and all kinds of other goodies.

The post Alder & Ash – Clutched in the Maw of the World appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Our debut, full-length LP was written with the notion that narrative, with its specificity of location and atmosphere, is an essential part of all music. As instrumentalists, we understand this to be a narrative without, or rather outside of, words.”

The result is something rather special. If you enjoyed the instrumental goodness we featured last year (e.g. Lejsovka & Freund, Danielle Fricke etc.) then you’re going to love this. ‘Trivial Pursuit’ opens with gentle guitar and the lazy buzz of cello, like a moseying bumble bee on a summer breeze. The song changes pace slightly around the halfway mark, the guitar rushing into quicker strums, little eddies and swirls in the musical current. It really is a lovely start.

‘Old Black, New Black’ has swishy, shaken percussion and undulating licks of cello, topped off with some strummed acoustic guitar, while ‘Every One of Them, Dogs’ has minimal but spiked guitar and barely-there thudding percussion as the cello snakes around, tying itself in knots as it climbs and climbs. Additionally, pedal steel give things a sunbaked, almost mirage-like, western feel. ‘American Mastodon’ has a softly tumbling and cyclical guitar line and gliding cello which skates across the songs bare black background, as well as some harsher blares, sounds I like to imagine are the trump of the titular mastodon as it trudges through a frozen spruce woodland. The impressively-titled ‘When I Die, Bury Me in the Woods So My Husband Will Hunt For Me’ is slow and sad and elegant as a curl of woodsmoke from a lonely chimney.

The second half of the album sees something of a shift as things get a little more electric. ‘The Bell Suite I. Currer’ is a song for Charlotte Brontë, the first in a triptych of songs which the band describe as a “brooding meditation on authorship, which seeks to personify each of the Brontë sisters in stark romantic relief.” ‘II. Ellis’ is the song for Emily, while ‘III. Acton’ evokes Anne, ending in big distortion-smothered electric guitar. ‘Devils Tower’ continues the electric theme but has more of a clanging subdued quality, before closer ‘Ellis (Reprise)’ is slow and somnolent, with gently plodding and plinking percussion and the final elegiac cello line.

Quarterly is a great record, more than just a change of pace to put on when you’re reading a book or concentrating on something else. It packs twice as much narrative content as most non-instrumental albums, it just takes a little more work on the listener’s part to find (and in some cases engineer) them. As the band say:

“These songs are lyrical vignettes that, seeded with associations, are meant to grow in each listener.”

You can buy Quarterly now from the Quarterly Bandcamp page.

The post Quarterly – s/t appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“The main aim of the [EP] was to address society’s forward-thinking nature, to help the listener forget about what’s coming next and focus on what they have right now – something which she refers to as “the never-ending struggle to remain in the present”

Now, Gundersen is back with a full-length album, Aurora, this time incorporating  what the press release calls

“The press forward that exists in spite of (or perhaps even because of) the cycle. It is the change that comes with the breaking of dawn”

You can hear one track right now, the elegaic ‘Waves’, which opens with snowflake-delicate piano before the introduction of strings, which at first appear mournful, but soon reveal themselves to be much more than that, as complex and stirring and beautiful as life itself.

Aurora will be released on the 1st September, and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp. The artwork is by MaryGrace Wolnski.

Cover photo by Nate Embry

The post Abby Gundersen announces new album appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The good news is that Keith Freund and Linda Lejsovka are still recording music. They have recently released a new album entitled Mold On Canvas. The bad news is that I’m late to this party and the LPs have already sold out. But don’t let stop you from checking out what proves to be a nuanced, interesting release.

The band describe their new sound as “DIY Shitty Classical”, which I can’t help feeling is a small slice of false modesty. Let’s get it straight that I know next to nothing about classical music, and I’m not particularly interested in its finer points, but I’m struggling to see how anyone could describe this album as “shitty”. Freund explains, “Mold on Canvas” is an exploration of ability… trespassing into the academic or classical music world with an amateur’s guess on pushing the right keys.”

The album opens with ‘Borrowed Mic Test’, which gently buzzes and pulses into life, the cautious wing-beats of the Lejsovka & Freund moniker as it emerges from its chrysalis. After just two and a half minutes this sonic lepidopteran takes flight, as pianos take over and we get our first glimpse of the new “classical” angle. Next up is ‘Hexations’, with its initial jarring slide giving way to some mournful piano. The title track is sad and pretty in all the right ways and ‘From Royal Ave’ shimmers with a warm, droning fuzz, cut through with some really nice strings.

Freund seems to have had a pretty clear picture in mind when composing these pieces, “These pieces are made by and for the view from huge sunroom windows overlooking a wooded ravine.” My advice would be to find yourself a sunroom, or just a wooded ravine (or really anywhere pretty), and let yourself drift off with it.

Mold On Canvas is a sad album, but not ‘sad’ in its usual usage, meaning upsetting or morose, but instead a different sad: a reflective, comforting sad, one almost synonymous with beautiful. I like it a lot, and I think you might too.

You can download it in its entirety via Bark & Hiss

The post Lejsovka & Freund – Mold On Canvas appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Romantic Works is, at least in part, centred around his experiences with stage fright and anxiety, with Henson using the album to explore the issues that have blighted his career as a live musician (‘Elevator Song’ is based upon an attack of pre-concert nerves while in a Glasgow lift). However, the stage fright metaphor/allegory is far from obvious or overwhelming, indeed I would have missed it had I not read the feature on Henson from The Independent. For me, on first listening to Romantic Works, the album sounds like the soundtrack to an arty film, in which even the simplest images and actions are melancholic and sad.

Irrespective of ulterior meanings, this is the album’s greatest achievement – how it seems to stand for a normal existence, its for lush and mournful instrumentation supported by field recordings, serving to highlight the beauty and sorrow of normal life. Again, ‘Elevator Song’ is a perfect example of this, with its poignant mood building up to the final recording of an automated voice warning on closing doors, rendering what at first seemed like a dramatic four minutes as something commonplace, a simple event. ‘Field’ uses bird song, ‘Josella’ the starting of a car, and each takes a familiar sound and gives it attention, supports it with traditionally ‘nice’ sounds of piano and cello, allowing it to it seem more important or meaningful. The album is at once tragic and beautiful, sombre and hopeful and lovely.

Of course, you could argue that my interpretation is not all that far from Henson’s intentions, and that fear and anxiety and the desire to run/hide is intrinsically linked with a modern ‘normal existence,’ opening up a whole new set of questions as to why this may be (and whether we have always been this way). It also refreshing and encouraging to see a young musician begin to describe and address these issues, and it nice to think that there is still a chance for artists to operate successfully under such stresses.

You can buy the album, as well as some nice t-shirts designed by the man himself, from Henson’s website, or stream it over at The Guardian.

The post Keaton Henson – Romantic Works appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The product of this inspiration was released early last month, a solo EP entitled Time Moves Quickly. The record is a departure from the Pacific Northwest folk revival (and therefore from what we’ve come to expect from the Gundersen family), instead offering five beautifully arranged tracks of piano, violin and cello. Gundersen says that the main aim of the record was to address society’s forward-thinking nature, to help the listener forget about what’s coming next and focus on what they have right now – something which she refers to as “the never-ending struggle to remain in the present”.

My current favourite track is ‘Farewell Summer’, which ends with (what sounds like) an old recording of The Public Garden, a poem by Robert Lowell. Have a listen below.

You can buy the EP over at Abby’s Bandcamp page.

The post Abby Gundersen – Time Moves Quickly appeared first on Various Small Flames.