The sound which emerges is at once intimate and far-reaching, what we described on single ‘Song for the Garden’ as “an uncanny marriage between personal insight and a wider mystical experience.” The mood is right there in the title. An environment quiet and half-lit but also cathedralesque, some latent mystery lurking not only in the shadowy corners but within the flames themselves.

Inspired by the work of surrealist Leonora Carrington, opener ‘Inn of the Dawn Horse’ pitches the listener straight into this world. A track build upon natural textures, Carsten’s delivery remains reflective and hushed. Though against this quiet rises Yaara Valey’s flugelhorn, like some invading force which knocks the track spinning from its natural rhythm into something erratic and odd. “My hollow hand looms, conducting visions unmade, absolute,” Carsten sings in the fitting final line, “and I’m at the root now, I’m at the root somehow / with all your visions echoing inside my little wooden room.”

The record is full of such songs. What Carsten calls “mythopoetic paeans to the domestic uncanny” which, as with Carrington’s paintings, present reality with extra dimensions superimposed. Half Shadow’s songs could be called poems, or perhaps spells or charms, incantations delivered into quiet spaces to summon strange and nameless things. Be this literal, as in ‘In My Room (A Creature Approaches)’ (“in my room,” Carsten sings, “a creature / a hidden creature / approaches”), or more oblique, as with tracks like ‘The Very Eye of the Night’ or ‘I Practice Dying (in the Spare Room)’.

Today sees the release of a brand new video for another such track, ‘A Full Day Spent (Between the Worlds)’. The song was born of a chance encounter, originating from a piece of text found on scrap paper at the back of a draw and evolving into what Cartsen calls a “mysterious travelogue into the unknown.”  A recorded memento of a journey into a space eerie and pastoral. The video employs medieval imagery to capture this bucolic mood, though its wry tone and green-screen backdrops adds an uncanny edge once more, and feeds into the central question of the record itself. “How does one find themselves in the house,” Carsten asks in the closing lines, “when on every door comes a ceaseless knocking that refuses to stop?”

At Home With My Candles is out now via Bud Tapes, Dove Cove Records and Illusion Florist Records and you can grab it from the Half Shadow Bandcamp page.

The post Half Shadow – At Home With My Candles appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Not that the subject matter necessarily suggests a more expansive sound. A joint release between Bud Tapes, Dove Cove Records and Illusion Florist Records, At Home With My Candles was recorded during quarantine, and as such directs its attention toward the ordinary/odd duality so often found behind closed doors. “An album of mythopoetic paeans to the domestic uncanny,” as the press release puts it. “The mysterious and unseen worlds experienced at home.” But to have such a cloistered record push into the largest and most encompassing sound yet feels entirely fitting for Half Shadow, and indeed the logical progression of its explorations of inner worlds.

Lead single ‘Song for the Garden’ serves as an introduction to this newly expansive style. With the plucked acoustic guitar and reverb-laden synth supported by Yaara Valey‘s flugelhorn, the song offers something lush and rhythmic to celebrate the growth beyond a home’s walls. These conditions prove fertile ground for  Half Shadow’s poetic sensibilities too, the rich sound wrapping around Carten’s vocals and lifting them to the the fore, an uncanny marriage between personal insight and a wider mystical experience.

I watch the poppies bloom
weeping evening blue
mineral bright water
effortless dew
I sleep with you… at the root

At Home With My Candles comes out on the 8th April via Bud Tapes, Dove Cove Records and Illusion Florist Records. You can pre-order it now from the Half Shadow Bandcamp page.

The post Half Shadow – Song for the Garden appeared first on Various Small Flames.