“Finally I relax,” sings Lejsovka on opener ‘Lime Loop’, with its pillowy synths and sense of patience, “the way everything slumps and settles as it burns.” It’s an immediate introduction to the juxtaposition at the heart of Balance, of finding peace in a world that seemingly has none.

Such spherical drops of serenity sit next to images of anger and violence, balanced by tracks such as ‘Gravel Pit’ with its talk of rage and gnashing teeth and a strange auto-tuned outro that updates the biblical adage about rich men and camels with added arterial spray. Things are dark too on ‘Aggregate’, a track built on looped piano and subtle beats, Freund delivering a breathless flow of lyrics that contrasts nicely with the sparing poetry of the other songs. “Something out in the street woke me up,” it begins, going on to detail commotion outside the window, a dead cat and cop cars and the victim of a mugging (“for a grapefruit and six bucks”).

Not that every song is quite so intense. The track ‘Staircase’ is all nostalgia for times past, and the systolic murmur of ‘Tanking for Zion’ fills what’s otherwise mostly negative space, another mindful and minimal song that sees the narrator time-out to appreciate a patch of warmth and light. “Took a minute in a square of sunlight,” she sings, “rare in this long night.” Such tracks feel like they come close to realizing the balance of the title, managing to square the competing poles and find some form of respite, for four minutes at least.

But even the songs that sound contented can’t escape the anxieties of our age. ‘New Moon’ is a calm and reflective pop song that seems to glow from within. Thematically, it’s an ode to the continuing beauty of nature even in our dramatically altered world, Lejsovka singing of early hyacinths and the “rainbow-skinned pools” of pollution or fertilizer run-off. “Maybe I shouldn’t smile as I, closed eyes, step into sunshine where the forest is clear-cut for high-tension wires,” she sings, “But I can’t really fake it, take it where I can get it.” Even if personal equilibrium is achieved, there’s a wider imbalance looming, and one that is not so easily solved.

‘Spider on Moss’ later returns to ecological concerns, dramatic synths painted across a dark palette like the aurora, as Freund sings of a trip to the gas station to buy some soon-to-be trash. The title refers to a desire to make oneself as small as a spider, to avoid that lasting footprint of destruction that us humans seem doomed to leave behind. It captures something at the heart of Balance, a sense of concern for other living things, both human and otherwise, something Trouble Books try to sum up in a line squirreled away on their Bandcamp page: “Balance is equal reward, opportunity, access, rights for all beings great and small.”

Pause and wonder at the dark trees
looming powerfully over the lit BP canopy
and me,
I’ll try to offset the cost, to be lite,
a spider on moss

Balance is out now and you can get it now via the Trouble Books Bandcamp.

The post Trouble Books – Balance appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If you’re anything like a regular reader then you’ll know that we love Talons’ here at WTD (like a lot), and after seeing Linklater’s film it struck me how they share common methods and goals. The second release in a series of four EPs (more on the third soon), Growing Up pulls a similarly bewitching and indescribable effect, pushing the buttons labelled Love and Sadness and Nostalgia and Death Anxiety all at once and ever so subtly, so that none can be said to be the presiding emotion. ‘My Life is an Endless Outro’ opens the mini-album and sets the unhurried and reflective atmosphere immediately. It sounds like a soundtrack of a wordless driving movie, all grainy analogue film footage of corn fields and motels rushing past open windows on a humid and grey summer’s day, but also has the trademark Talons’ self-deprecating, life-deprecating attitude:

“He blew a tire on 65 North.
Hit a retread in the road- was he looking at the wind farm or down at his phone?
Went across the median, towards the truck that I just passed.
I was on the phone with you, complaining about my job.

Will my last words really be so trivial?
Alone in a rented Scion cube, I’ll slide off into nothing.”

‘Milwaukee’ is about as noisy as Talons’ have ever been, the swirly background fuzz and percussion taking things a lot further than the simple acoustic recordings we’re used to, though it’s still cloaked in that same sense of reluctant apathy. I can’t think of another band who could make the line, “Milwaukee tonight smells like the mall in middle school” sound so resigned and nostalgic and sad. But the standout line comes later in the track, a line that to me sums up everything Talons’ stand for, the whole aesthetic in twelve words:

“Its funny how life can be so rad sometimes
then its not”

‘All That Hasn’t Burned is Drowned’ is classic Talons’, the lyrics reading like the kind of poem that makes me wish I could get into poetry: “The house across the street from us is burning down / I woke up to the heat on my face (I guess the wind must have been blowing the other way)”. Then the instrumental ‘Song For Carissa’s Wierd’ puts acoustic guitar over that looped, feedback-type sound that worms its way into several of the tracks, while ‘Richmond’ is a song that highlights Tolan’s knack for sounding simultaneously sad and hopeful, “As the sun rises somewhere in western Virginia /  You’re the only thing that’s in my head / And I won’t lose you again”. The effect is really difficult to explain, like pain and joy rolled into one, and is exemplified by the reference to listening to Boxer back to back repeatedly, one of the albums we leant on until they became the redemption we needed, the albums that make it hard not to look at past troubles with something approaching fondness.

‘Song for Bass VI and Joe Golden’s Vibrochamp’ is another instrumental, featuring Keith Freund (of Lejsovka & Freund and formerly Trouble Books) on bass clarinet, before the two-part final track emerges from faint sound recordings. ‘Growing Up (Part 1)’ opens with the most important lyrics on the record, a summation of the titular themes, before transitioning seamlessly into ‘Growing Up (Part 2)’, the instrumental finale/epilogue. The closer plays like Boyhood if the camera had kept rolling, if the boy graduated and became wary and weary and had to try to make a life during a global recession.

“Is growing up just getting better at letting yourself off the hook?
At learning not to look?
(or to look away from the things you could change but don’t)”

The fact that the above lyrics are an explicit explanation of Growing Up shows just how subtle and indistinct the record’s themes are, though that’s not to say they are not felt keenly. Indeed, if anything they are too immediate to properly describe, charting history in the present, emotions and trends which define us so closely we cannot get a good view of them. I guess that’s the point of art, to convey the things that we can’t yet put into normal words. Talking about this kind of stuff directly somehow feels wrong, like it should be left to David Foster Wallace to make sense of with Charlie Rose or something, but the feel of these songs capture something. If someone was making a time capsule and wanted to show a civilization in 4016 what it’s like to be alive (and of a certain age/social class) today then I’d play them this.

You can buy Growing Up now from the Talons’ Bandcamp page.

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Because we still have a fair amount of tapes left, and obviously want to raise as much as possible for Worldreader, we have decided to run a special holiday offer. So, as suggested below in stylised sans serif, entering the code ‘HOHOHO’ at the checkout on Bandcamp will get you a handsome 40% off both digital and physical copies of the compilation. This will still cover the production cost of the cassette, but remember all profits go to charity, so every extra pound you give will be a pound well spent.To refresh your memory, here’s what you’ll be getting if you put some of your hard earned cash towards Quiet, Constant Friends:

Side A

Danielle Fricke – The Well
Lotte Kestner – Cattleya
Wes Tirey – Akhnilo Blues
Pasture Dog – Everything That Rises Must Converge
Old Earth – Pretty Steep
Salt Altars – Little Big Man
Henry Demos – Not Her
Beat Radio – Mexico City
Sondra Sun-Odeon – Hair

Side B

Nathan Amundson – Haruki Murakami
Windmill – Jim & The Rather Large Nectarine
ARMS – The Book of Love
Oh, Rose & Sawtooth – TV
Free Cake For Every Creature – Don’t Go Away (Ahumpf Acgroof)
John Ross – The Overlook Hotel
Kissing Fractures – I Drank Phosphorus With Aunt Lucy
Nice Legs – Past Lives
Ben Seretan – King of Crumbs
Trouble Books – Oak and Linden Tree Abridged
Lewtrakimou – I’m a Book on Tape
Nadia Reid – Runway

Grab a download or cassette now via our Bandcamp page, and be sure to remember to use the code ‘HOHOHO’ for your discount.

The post Quiet Constant Friends: A Christmas Sale (40% Off!) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

On a related note, things are gradually getting busier for us in other areas – Liam works full-time and I’ve gone back to school – so the old two posts a day routine might not be maintained too often any more. That said, in an effort to keep things ticking over, we’re going to introduce a new ‘Flash Review’ feature where we cover albums in less words than we would otherwise use. It’s not ideal but a short piece is better than no piece. There’ll still be a good smattering of the usual style too.

Tracklisting:

1. Birthstone (Reprise) – Pet Cemetery
   2. Vice – Roundheels
   3. Forever – Boosegumps
   4. So Long – Heavy Boots
   5. Long Walk To All Sorts of Place – Fanpage
   6. Feathers & Leaves – Ocean Floor
   7. Down Predator Souvenirs – Lejsovka & Freund
   8. Vacation – Florist
   9. 2. – Old Earth
   10. Never Good Enough – Eerie Summer
   11. EZ River – Wilder Maker
   12. Thumbs – Claire Cottrill
   13. If I Were A Portal – Evening Hymns
   14. Jenny Come Home – Andy Shauf
   15. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   16. The Flood – Mike Pace & the Child Actors
   17. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
   18. Nancy Kerrigan – Frog
   19. Kaleidoscope – Arbes
   20. The Book of Love – ARMS

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Fatal Strategies is essentially a classical album (or neo-classical or whatever fancy people call it). I’ll admit to not listening to all that much classical music, mainly because I fear it would sail over my head, or not seem all that relevant, or something equally ignorant. But the “classical” music that Lejsovka & Freund make is different, it’s classical music that my brain seems to cling on to, to wrap itself around in a grey-furrowed hug. That’s not to say Lejsovka & Freund’s music isn’t intellectually/philosophically deep and complex, because it is. As Keith Freund puts it in his blurb:

We’re beyond excited about how it’s all panned out, hopefully others enjoy it as much. There are some different ideas, allusions, philosophies, and jokes in here but there’s really no need to belabor your listening experience with them.

Anyway, the point is that Lejsovka & Freund make classical music that does something to my brain, something I’m hardly able to process, let alone elucidate. For whatever reason, it makes me feel good. Not in a fun, dance-around-my-bedroom kind of way, but in a heartwarming, perspective-giving way. It has all the hallmarks of the genre – strings and piano and no conventional vocals, but it also feels fresh and contemporary.

Their songs have always seemed part organic and part not, subject to rhythms both mystically natural and complexly digital. Tracks are liable to fracture into pixelated shards which float off into the ether, flowing streams of countless 1s and 0s. Opener ‘Return to Emptiness’ is a great example of this. From all manner of noises – clicks and bloops and hums and whirs – comes a beautiful piano line sounding almost like the passing of time. The track stops abruptly before the end, giving way to slow quavering strings, like the unsteady laboured breaths of some strange alien life form. It’s a strong start, and a welcome reassurance that L&J are sticking to what they do best.

‘Municipal Xerox’ coats pianos in a dusting of electrical static so tactile in headphones you can almost crunch it in your molars, continuing with intermittent swells of feedback, the piano picking up to quite a pace, something I subconsciously categorised as a watching-cityscapes-fly-by-a-train-window tempo. ‘Nothing, Just Looking at the Moon’ is another beauty, great breathy pulses preceding yet more lovely piano which sounds somehow contentedly sad (if that’s the right word), a little like the title of the song itself. ‘Debris Fields’ has this weird intro of stuttering electronics, fluttering strings and cantering piano, which descends into a period of hush, like some strange vacuum. This eventually gives way to feedback and drones and a decidedly ominous air, before a trilled set of beeps, like a supercomputer calculating some crucial formula, heralds the return of piano and pretty, elegiac strings. ‘Carry this Object’ is mostly piano-led, but also develops these strange background sounds – rustles and whispers and taps (apparently from You’re Worth It – an ASMR radio show on Berlin Community radio) – eventually clearing to reveal a woman’s voice repeating the cryptic phrase “another rectangle, an open cage”.

‘Downed Predator Souvenirs’ floats on a haze of strings and low droning piano (be sure to check Gabe Schray’s video below!), while ‘Fog in the Ravine’ has a wonderfully suitable title – tendrils of atmosphere creeping in at the start before the entrance of pianos somehow both sombre and sweeping. Closer ‘Hamburgers in the Woods’ has sounds like an errant Geiger counter or holographic raindrops bouncing on the leaves of some strange digital forest. The track (and album) then ends in vocals that seem fit for a lonely monastery or valley-sat, fire-lit campsite, but are actually soprano Megan Elk and her interpretation of the Swenson’s Galley Boy recipe.* Yes really.

Fatal Strategies inspires a multitude of strange, lateral thoughts – a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film. The musical translation of the postmodern ruminations of an over-active, twenty-first century brain. Music unearthed by a post-society people, who’ll turn it up loud and sit in their ruined cities, reclaimed by branches and vines, and wonder and wonder about us.

Fatal Strategies was released on vinyl by Bark & Hiss (US) and MIE Music (UK). You can also download it via the Lejsovka & Freund Bandcamp page.

*I had to look this up. Say hello to Swenson’s Galley Boy.

The post Lejsovka & Freund – Fatal Strategies appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The accompanying painting for this song is by San Francisco-based artist Lindsay Stripling, who manages to match the simple, warm message of the song and myth. Sometimes things can withstand the passage of time. You can find her work on her website, buy it from her shop and follow her on Tumblr and Instagram.

You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. All tapes come with super-limited edition postcard art prints, and all profits will go to Worldreader.

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Imagine my excitement then upon hearing that the husband and wife duo have a new album on the way. Fatal Strategies is due for release in October on Bark & Hiss in the US and MIE here in the UK, and promises to continue where Mold on Canvas left off, deepening the couple’s exploration of what they term “DIY shitty classical”. Add to that some help from CFCF and you’ve got yourself all the ingredients for something pretty amazing. I can’t wait to hear the whole thing, and luckily I can get a taster right now, courtesy of Boiler Room:

You can pre-order Fatal Strategies right now via Bark & Hiss or MIE. Be aware that records are super-limited so grab one quick!

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“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers”

So says Charles William Eliot, and I tend to agree with him. And not just because I’ve thrown my lot in with the literary world. Books are where you learn that others share your weirdest thoughts and experiences, and are able to describe them in a way that makes you want to squee with delight or tattoo the words into your skin. What’s more, they let you experience life as someone else, allowing you to get a grip on the unseen forces which batter some while you relax in ignorant shelter. I can confidently say I would be a different person had I not become acquainted with John Singer and Don Gately and Ignatius J. Reilly, with JR from New York and Ruthie from Fingerbone and Oscar Wao from the Dominican Republic, now of Paterson, New Jersey. That’s without mentioning Esther Greenwood or Hazel Motes or the Glass family, nor Mr Small or Spot the Dog or any of the menagerie of Redwall mammals, ie. any of the hundreds of fictional folk who helped build the world as I now see it.

If, then, you cannot read, you automatically miss out on an army* of literary friends to entertain you and hold your hand and generally remind you that you are not alone. You may or may not know that UNESCO estimate there are 757 million adults, including 115 million youths (15-24), who cannot read or write the simplest of sentences. They even have a cool interactive map to give you a better idea of where the problem is biggest.

Worldreader is non-profit organisation dedicated to creating a literate world through digital education. Their Worldreader Mobile app (available on even the simplest feature phones) brings digital books to families around the planet, allowing communities without access to any print books to connect to a library of over 28,500 titles in over 40 languages. And this sort of programme extends far further than helping people gain basic skills. Take the current Ebola outbreak as an example. With such a deadly disease it can be difficult to provide adequate information to those in danger, particularly when moving around increases the risk of transmission and worsens the situation. Worldreader are utilising their mobile reading app to disseminate information to help save lives, from vital health advice to inspiring stories from survivors, while minimising the need for movement on the ground, and thus transmission.

Of course, all this ignores the whole special, reading-as-a-magic-activity side of things that Charles William Eliot was getting at. Books are fun and comforting and inspiring and door-unlocking in so many ways, and I believe quite firmly that increasing the number of young people reading is one of the best ways to deal with current issues and prepare ourselves for future ones. Worldreader actively curates books by African and Indian authors, so rather than just beaming the same dusty classics all over the world, they’ve developed a library representative of the diversity of interests, tastes and subjects seen around the globe. Better still, the mobile aspect will help transform education into an unstoppable force. No longer will your gender or religion or race prevent access to education, nor any disabilities, nor your social standing. With a small amount of help from charities like Worldreader, we can overcome privilege and prejudice by placing education in the hands of the people. We can be each other’s quiet, constant friends.

It’s all pretty inspiring. So much so that I decided to try to help with my own version of community and worldwide collaboration. Quiet, Constant Friends, a compilation of literary-themed songs by some of my favourite artists, will be sold in support of Worldreader, with every penny of the profits going straight into their good work. Some of the songs were recorded especially for this release, some are from upcoming albums and others are old favourites which fit nicely with the theme. You can listen to one new track, ‘I’m a Book on Tape’ by Lewtrakimou, right now:

I’ll be unveiling more songs between now and release, so keep your eyes peeled for that, and check out the artwork and full tracklisting below:

1. The Well – Danielle Fricke
2. Cattleya – Lotte Kestner
3. Akhnilo Blues – Wes Tirey
4. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Pasture Dog
5. Pretty Steep – Old Earth
6. Little Big Man – Salt Altars
7. Not Her – Henry Demos
8. Mexico City – Beat Radio
9. Hair – Sondra Sun-Odeon
10. Haruki Murakami – Nathan Amundson (of Rivulets)
11. Jim and the Rather Large Nectarine – Windmill
12. The Book of Love – ARMS
13. TV – Oh, Rose & Sawtooth
14. Don’t Go Away Ahumpf Acgroomf – Free Cake For Every Creature
15. The Overlook Hotel – John Ross
16. I Drank Phosphorus with my Aunt Lucy – Kissing Fractures
17. Past Lives – Nice Legs
18. King of Crumbs – Ben Seretan
19. Oak and Linden Tree Abridged – Trouble Books
20. I’m a Book on Tape – Lewtrakimou
21. Runway – Nadia Reid

As if collaborating with 20-odd acts wasn’t exciting enough, we’ve also enlisted the talents of a range of artists and illustrators to design special-edition postcards for each song. Again, I’ll be unveiling these as time goes on, but check out the piece for Lewtrakimou’s song by Ji Hyun Yu below:Huge, huge, huge thanks go out to everyone involved. It has been so great to see how nice and enthusiastic people can be about a simple idea, and how it can evolve into something much better than I ever expected. I owe you all.

Quiet Constant Friends is out now. You can buy it from our Bandcamp page, including a limited edition cassette, complete with some super-limited edition art postcard prints (you can browse the complete set of artworks here).We decided against having this as a free download in an attempt to raise as much for Worldreader as we possibly can. Obviously, if you choose to pay more than the suggested amount you are donating more to Worldreader, so feel free to do that. That said, we know times are tough, so if anyone wants a download, just drop us a message/tweet/email and we’ll sort you out, no questions asked.

* I’m taking suggestions for the best collective noun for friends who only exist in books.

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Illustrated by Joe Sumner, the book charts Wyld’s life, from hearing Aussie fishermen stories aged six to her grown adult self. From the moment her brother is brought the jaws of a bronze whaler by Father Christmas, Wyld becomes preoccupied with sharks. The captivation is not helped when she discovers a book on shark attacks and falls in love with Rodney Fox‘s “salty eyes” and look which said “the whole thing was just fine”.

Back in London Wyld finds obsession continuing, scouring the Sydenham library for shark books while plagued by a fear which makes baths difficult and forces her to sit with all appendages safely on-board the sofa. An ill-advised viewing of Jaws cements her mindset before the family return to Australia and encounter more sharks in a variety of situations (imaginary and otherwise).

What this simplification of the plot leaves out are the small details of familial life squeezed into both the writing and illustration, the astute observations and interactions from Wyld’s juvenile viewpoint which reveal what the book is really about. Wyld’s father, the pale Englishman, often cuts a lone figure, isolated in London by work and wine and in Australia by layers of clothing and high-factor sun-cream, while her mother floats with Wyld in the pool at night because “she is awake anyway”. When Wyld’s older brother begins “linger[ing] in doorways with a blank look on his face”, and returning home cut and bruised, the home is loaded with tension yet remains cryptic to Wyld, and by extension, us. Be they adolescent anxieties, genuine enduring depressions or just good old fashioned existential ennui, the emotions of the adults remain alien, unknowable and for the most part hidden, present only as dark, lingering shapes and ominous choppy wake.

Indeed, this sharks-as-emotions allegory can be extended further than sadness. From her father’s well-meaning day trip to ‘Vic Hislop’s Killer Shark Show’, to her encounter with an uncomfortably comic doctor, pretty much all of Wyld’s interactions are surrounded by the unseen forces of love and loss. Sumner’s artwork highlights this paradoxically by adding photo-realistic sharks and wounds to his otherwise simple drawings, beasts which often stalk Wyld when, consciously or otherwise, she is considering losing a loved one. Although she doesn’t quite understand it yet, she is thinking about love through its most illuminating prism – the loss of it. She is thinking about death.

While this morbid idea is true and central to the plot, it would be naive and unfair to dwell on it without noticing that, amongst it all, life not only goes on but flourishes. Wyld is never caught by the shark, nor is her brother or mother or father. She might have felt ill examining the colossal White Pointer at Vic Hislop’s museum but the next day she was braver in the sea. Our relationship with sharks is changing, with The Discovery Channel and National Geographic and the seemingly monthly event of ‘Shark Week’ beaming out pro-shark propaganda in which deep-tanned marine biologists preach education and understanding and love. Similarly, the message from Wyld seems not so much ‘LOOK OUT LIFE WANTS TO EAT YOU!’ but rather ‘life could eat you, sure, but such occurrences are exceedingly rare and even then you can poke it in the eye and escape to the hands of kind strangers who prod your guts back into your body’. In other words, learning to accept the atavistic, bone-level violence and pain as something natural, unaware and worthy of careful respect. Its strikes are few and far between, and even then, it’s nothing personal.

Everything Is Teeth is out now on Jonathan Cape/Random House.

As per usual, we’ve made you a playlist of songs that are related to the book. Nothing too subtle this time, I’m afraid, just plenty of teeth and blood sprinkled with Australians and capped off with the definitive garage-rock  anthem for sharks.

Tracklisting:

1. The Race – Oh Pep
2. Teeth – Bowerbirds
3. Drawn to the Blood – Sufjan Stevens
4. Swim – Surfer Blood
5. I Want Blood – Water Liars
6. Ocean’s Nerves – Songs:Ohia
7. Jaws of Life – Wintersleep
8. Find Me In The Ocean – Will Samson
9. Blood Song – Stupid Loser
10. Everywhere I Go Smells Like Fish – Donovan Woods
11. King Fish – Sun Kil Moon
12. Lurk Underneath – Trouble Books
13. Blood – The Middle East
14. Shark? – Shark?

The post Everything Is Teeth – Evie Wyld & Joe Sumner appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklist:

1. She Reminds Me – Family Video
2. Jean Skirt Mystique – Naps
3. Sail – Swim Lessons
4. Mirror Threat – Waiters
5. Tibetan Clouds – Chips Calipso
6. Smokesquare – Fanpage
7. This City Will Eat Itself – Blush Response
8. Undone – Phoria
9. Lungs – Pixel Fix
10. Ancient Ways – Interpol
11. Have You Seen My Son – Benjamin Booker
12. Ballad of Big Nothing (Elliott Smith cover) – Arms
13. Stupid Boy – Owl John
14. Memento Mori – Hollow Wood
15. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (R.E.M. cover) – Free Cake For Every Creature
16. Youth – Thad Kopec
17. You Belong – Lucas O’Connell
18. Knives – The Meanest Creature Ever Known
19. Accept That the Mark Will Outlast You – Old Earth
20. If I’m – Sea Oleena
21. Joni – Old Amica
22. Autumn in the New Canaan – Lejsovka & Freund

August Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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