Today we have the pleasure of unveiling the video for ‘Indigo’, made in preview of the Orindal release and as way of kicking off a US/Canadian tour that Walker has just embarked upon (see full dates below). In our review, we described the intimate track as possessing  “hospitable quiet… calm and serene yet laced with sadness,” which seems to sum up the atmosphere quite nicely. From the ambient background noise and Walker’s counting in to the gentle guitar and crooned vocals, every element feels organic and sincere, like some dateless hymn made familiar on early evening porches and sang from memory. Equally, the lyrics feel both immediate and well-worn, like words for heartbreak handed down through generations, imprinted in the mind and no less relevant for it.

“I’m too tired to throw stones
to hold this memory alone
too stubborn to ask you
to come back home”

The entire album achieves this delightfully paradoxical effect, sounding at once personal and communal, timely and timeless, being neither folk nor ambient yet an enhanced version of both. To return to our original piece, “[Hands in Our Names has] a freedom not just born of trope-avoiding experimentalism but somehow inherent in the very combinations of sounds, as though arranged into secret patterns or codes, magic spells that trump postmodern convictions. Rather than dying in open air upon leaving her mouth, Karima Walker’s communications bubble from within, stirring that dormant empathy that lies somewhere near the centre of us all.”

Hands in Our Names is to be released on Orindal Records on the 24th March and you can pre-order it now via Bandcamp, including a mystery colour vinyl edition complete with heavyweight, full colour Stoughton jacket, a full colour 11×17 poster and a Risograph-printed insert. As we mentioned above, Walker is just setting off on a rather extensive tour of North America, playing with some excellent acts along the way, so be sure to browse the list below and check out any show within your area.

March 14, 2017 – Springfield, MO – Front of House Lounge
March 15, 2017 – St. Louis, MO – House Show >
March 16, 2017 – Rock Island, IL @ Rozz Tox =
March 17, 2017 – Iowa City, IA @ Public Space One =
March 18, 2017 – Ames, IA @ Vinyl Grind =
March 19, 2017 – Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot Music Hall =
March 20, 2017 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Total Drag =
March 21, 2017 – Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium =
March 22, 2017 – Duluth, MN @ Red Herring =
March 23, 2017 – St Paul, MN @ Amsterdam =
March 24, 2017 – Eau Claire, WI @ Oxbow Hotel =
March 25, 2017 – Madison, WI @ Frequency =
March 26, 2017 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club =
March 30, 2017 – Chicago, IL @ Gman Tavern =+
April 01, 2017 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Sage House =
April 02, 2017 – Kalamazoo, MI @ TBA =
April 03, 2017 – Windsor, ON @ The Rondo =
April 04, 2017 – Toronto, ON @ Silver Dollar Room =
April 05, 2017 – Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk Place =
April 06, 2017 – Nyack, NY @ Kiam Records Shop =@
April 07, 2017 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Hall ?
April 08, 2017 – Providence, RI @ Columbus Theater *=
April 09, 2017 – Portland, ME @ Oxbow /=
April 10, 2017 – Boston, MA @ Atwood’s Tavern *=
April 11, 2017 – Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA =#*
April 12, 2017 – Baltimore, MD @ EMP Collective =
April 14, 2017 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Roboto Project *=
April 16, 2017 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Comet
April 17, 2017 – Bloomington, IN @ TBA
April 18, 2017 – Louisville, KY @ Dreamland
April 19, 2017 – Knoxville, TN @ Pilotlight
April 21, 2017 – Marshall, NC @ Marshall High Studios
April 22, 2017 – Atlanta, GA @ Mammal Gallery
April 26, 2017 – Houston, TX @ Notsuoh
April 27, 2017 – Galveston, TX @ Galveston Artist Residency
April 28, 2017 – Austin, TX @ Lemon Lounge

> w/ Dubb Nubb
= w/ Advance Base
+ w/ gobbinjr
@ w/ Amy Bezunartea
? Orindal label showcase w/ Advance Base, Lisa/Liza, Hello Shark & secret special guests
* w/ John Davis
/ w/ Lisa/Liza
# w/ Hello Shark

Photograph by Eugene Starobinskiy

The post Video Premiere: Karima Walker – Indigo appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The reason for the lit theory lesson is Hands in Our Names, the new album from Tuscon’s Karima Walker. Following on from last year’s Take Your Time, a folk release with drone flourishes, the new record sees Walker push further into experimental territory, utilising field/found recordings along with significant drone to create something which sits at the interface of singer-songwriter and avant-garde music.Opener ‘What is Left?’ sets this out. An open-world hiss is slowly populated by a variety of field recordings which skip and jump and repeat over and over, like the product of some malfunctioning record player, before the clips fall away and allow Walker’s song to start (in a traditional vocals-and-guitar sense). The ambient textures are ever-present in the background, and the briefest echoes of the recordings leech through, ghosts of that which previously occupied the space Walker now inhabits. ‘Holy Blanket’ is simpler though pulls the same effect, the foreground vocals sitting atop of a stack of time in which so much happened, while ‘Bells’ drops the words entirely in favour of click-hum drones which float and flash and fly above a backdrop of the natural world – birds and bees and the great hush of passing time.

The title track is a folk song in the old tradition, an a cappella hymn in which Walker loops her vocals until they become superimposed, the various lines overlapping into an echoed chant, a multi-faceted chorus descending into a hymenopteran drone as heard from within the hive.

“Gather as the dust, laying ‘cross the desert
Pillars of salt that turned to flee
My eyes in turning to my brother
My help does not come from thee”

‘To Carry Heavy Things Alone’ simmers beneath a subdued surface, clear intentions lost in the between-channel fuzz, while ‘Ky By Bo’ flickers forward and back before the entry of Walker’s crooned vocals. ‘We’ve Been Here Before’ opens with distant field recordings, the lonely drone like the slight vibration of air in an empty room, before the emergence of a melancholy folk song. The lyrics are gentle and warm and humane, simple words of comfort and perhaps love, as the ever-brightening background drone morphs into something like the sonic representation of hope. As the track concludes the song fades into static, Walker’s vocals lost to white noise as the listener passes out of range of the transmission, though the ambient note continues, the essence of her message lodged deep in our inner ear.

After the twitching interlude of ‘One Moved Slowly Through This Place’, the slow beauty of ‘St Ignacio’ arrives in a whistle of static, the vocals wide and shimmering across the first significant percussion. Again the mood is melancholic but compassionately so, a strange and tender dream where every action is poetic and perfect and perhaps portent to a future peace. Barking dogs herald the muffled ‘Singing City’, an instrumental which plays like the spectral murmur of an abandoned building, before ‘Indigo’ brings us back into the present with an altogether more hospitable quiet, a place calm and serene yet laced with sadness (“I’m too tired to throw stones / to hold this memory alone / Too stubborn to ask you to come back home”). The album closes on ‘Lullaby’, a song which serves as a neat summation of the album, placing the present as one thread within the dense tapestry of time, a small component insignificant to the overall pattern yet fundamental all the same.

“Sun dried sweat upon your back
sun drew laughing faces
Time will tell what we do lack
children take our places”

Fulfilling Funk’s post-postmodern vision, Hands in Our Names sees Karima Walker reconstruct an array of varied elements into something larger and more meaningful than they could ever be alone. Field recordings from her present and found recordings from someone else’s past swirl above and beneath her own words and guitar notes, drones of every pitch filling the background and stretching the songs into worlds of their own. When atomised into separate parts, the album is impressionistic, blurry and strange and difficult to describe, though when listened to as a whole, a blanket of stitches, it becomes something vivid and intuitive. As such, Hands in Our Names is able to convey things normal songs cannot, a freedom not just born of trope-avoiding experimentalism but somehow inherent in the very combinations of sounds, as though arranged into secret patterns or codes, magic spells that trump postmodern convictions. Rather than dying in open air upon leaving her mouth, Karima Walker’s communications bubble from within, stirring that dormant empathy that lies somewhere near the centre of us all.

Hands in Our Names is out now and you can buy it from the Orindal Records Bandcamp page, including on some rather lovely cassettes. Walker is playing a release show tonight (June 30th, 2016) at Tuscon’s Exploded View, and then heads out on a tour of the southwestern states. Check out the full dates below:

6/30 Tuscon, AZ @ Exploded View
7/1 Bisbee, AZ @ Silver King
7/2 Las Cruces, NM @ Art Obscura w/ Our Friend the Mountain & Ehran Krauel
7/3 Albuquerque, NM @ Ocotillo Room w/Chicharra & Ermine
7/4 Santa Fe, NM @ Ghost w/Glitter Vomit, AJ Woods & Will Schreitz
7/5 Taos, NM @ Mesa Brewing
7/6 Colorado Springs, CO @ Welcome Fellow w/TBA
7/7 Boulder, CO @ The Forge w/Cy Phi, Luna May & Gardenhoe
7/8 Denver, CO @ House Show w/Boat Drinks
7/9 Grand Junction, CO @ TBA
7/11 Moab, UT @ House Show
7/12 Salt Lake City @ Diabolical Records w/tba
7/14 Nampa, ID @ Flying M
7/15 Boise, ID @ Studio 208 w/With Child & Spiritual Warfare
7/16 Baker City, OR @ Lone Pine w/Shannon Gray

Tape art/printing by Super Hit Press, photograph by Eugene Starobinskiy (& blanket by Karima Walker’s grandmother)

The post Karima Walker – Hands in Our Names appeared first on Various Small Flames.