"you were my silver sun / better than anyone..."
There is something about songs were two people appear to be addressing each other and when done right this kind of face to face sonic stage play captivates me. One such song is the poised and somber "so terribly hurt" by Victor Mucho, the musical moniker of Tennesseean Brian Macdonald (Judah & the Lion) and featuring Molly Parden. Written and recorded when living abroad on the remote island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea (Sweden) in the rural town of Macdonald with his wife Maddie and their dog Halyard and informed by crashing waves on ancient rocky shores, being away from his roots and the reflection of one's own isolation.
"So terribly hurt" moves on a frail acoustic framework that itself feels as if it can collapse under the weight of it's own sadness. Brian's voice rendered in what feels like organic echoed ambiance raises and stair steps as other sounds crash around him like those ancient waves. I am struck by Molly Parden's vocal aesthetic brilliantly recorded with a different tension, less far away, more intimate, more in close quarters and when the two different voices come together with a multitude of instruments and backing vox layered in it is dramatically beautiful.
That song is part of Victor Mucho's debut album "Moonlight in Visby" due out May 13th, 2022.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/victormucho
https://twitter.com/victormucho
https://www.instagram.com/victormucho/
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/victor-mucho/996066172
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6uV2cOu6PbLzYNQyxPo9iu
Moonlight in Visby is Brian Macdonald’s debut album as Victor Mucho, written and recorded during his time living abroad in Sweden. Macdonald, his wife Maddie, and dog Halyard bunkered down on the remote island of Gotland found in the Baltic Seas. Victor Mucho found himself in a secluded bubble. He was half a world away from the familiar big cities, and fashion and trends seemed non-existent. Marooned in the tiny, rural town of Visby, their new home sat atop a massive grey limestone rock, the last remnants of what was once a coral reef. They settled within the five-mile town, threaded with brick-lined streets and bordered by medieval defense walls from eight centuries ago. His daily walks uncovered the ancient lives of fossils among the smooth stone beaches; jaunts to the grocery store would be enveloped by Viking ruins. Every day served as a reminder of the tiny space the Macdonald’s occupied on a small island, surrounded by artifacts spanning over eons. They held a year of seclusion and silence with the ancient, bordered by the cold and stormy Baltic tides. With his wife spending her days in school, Victor Mucho learned to surf, chartering himself against the crashing sea and discovering his own frailty. The waves sculpted him like they had carved the limestone pillars of the Raukas backdropped behind him over a millennia ago.
Leaving his home in Tennessee proved difficult. Homesickness fogged his vision, wanting to return to the life he’d built. The tides pushed him into eerie loneliness on an island that spoke a different language. Then came the winter. The crashing waves that soundtracked his days crested, reaching near-freezing temperatures. Every so often, the winds faded and the waters stilled, and the island would sit stoically in the dark, crisp air. This 14 song album is shaped by that space. That feeling of vastness and isolation in a closed-in world. Every day was a study and acceptance of weakness, found in the waves and in one’s heart. Every day asked him whether he should wait for home or to wake and build a new one. Victor Mucho reckoned with love and identity, forged by the frigid Baltic Sea and quenched by fires on the beach.
He brought his mandolin to Sweden, and upon his arrival, bought an old guitar from a woman on the island. The guitar turned out to be the songwriting vessel. The mandolin served as the natural texture added in the recording process. The songs came to life in a dark bedroom next to the sea, at times lit by the moon, other times by only a candle. The window facing 221º SW, straight towards his home in Nashville. Except for “Apart from You,” composed in Silverhättan, the northwesterly tower of the Visby Ringmur, or “made a fire,” birthed on a chilly fall evening around a campfire at the northern tip of the sheep island Fårö, adjacent to Gotland. Fårö housed many moments of the songwriting process. Days and nights camping and traversing were always accompanied by his guitar. Fårö was also the home of legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. It was the place where he gained inspiration from the land and shot many of his films. Bergman’s bleak outlook of the world seems founded by the rigid lithic landscape of the island. Victor Mucho’s entire life had centered on optimism leading up to his time in Visby. The collision of the cold waves and the solemn solitude of Bergman’s world is married to that clashing personal worldview of hope throughout Moonlight in Visby and Victor Mucho’s search for identity. And those worldviews collide at the lighthouse on Fårö; the point where a calm, quiet sandy beach meets the rocky strand, and the rigid harsh landscape of Fårö.
Once the bedroom recordings were finished, it was time to take them into the studio. Through mutual connections, Victor Mucho met producer and Swedish Grammy-nominated Tobias Fröberg, who lives and works out of Sandkvie Studio, directly in the center of the Visby Harbor. Fröberg has had great success as a producer in Sweden and his own international career as a lo-fi indie artist. With their similar taste in music, they immediately clicked.
The studio, just a walk down the coast from Victor Mucho’s home, made it naturally easy to record without any rigid schedule or time frame. Two of the songs on the album were written and recorded in the last week of his time on Gotland when he felt the weight of the move back home. Sandkvie studio is in an old warehouse next to the ferry terminal. Victor Mucho always felt the presence of those large ships looming behind him, knowing one day soon he would board one and leave for his old home of Nashville. That underlying knowledge propelled him to finish the album before returning home. He also leaned heavily on Axel Fagerberg, his long-time friend and expert percussionist from Stockholm. Fagerberg’s fingerprints are all over the album, adding a wide range of textures from glockenspiel to fretless bass, background vocals, and much more. The recording process as a whole was a very authentic, unplanned, natural progression.
Moonlight in Visby was not initially intended to be an album, but simply songwriting as a means to process a changing life and identity at the time. Only in hindsight did the story become clear.
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/victormucho
https://twitter.com/victormucho
https://www.instagram.com/victormucho/
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/victor-mucho/996066172
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6uV2cOu6PbLzYNQyxPo9iu
Moonlight in Visby is Brian Macdonald’s debut album as Victor Mucho, written and recorded during his time living abroad in Sweden. Macdonald, his wife Maddie, and dog Halyard bunkered down on the remote island of Gotland found in the Baltic Seas. Victor Mucho found himself in a secluded bubble. He was half a world away from the familiar big cities, and fashion and trends seemed non-existent. Marooned in the tiny, rural town of Visby, their new home sat atop a massive grey limestone rock, the last remnants of what was once a coral reef. They settled within the five-mile town, threaded with brick-lined streets and bordered by medieval defense walls from eight centuries ago. His daily walks uncovered the ancient lives of fossils among the smooth stone beaches; jaunts to the grocery store would be enveloped by Viking ruins. Every day served as a reminder of the tiny space the Macdonald’s occupied on a small island, surrounded by artifacts spanning over eons. They held a year of seclusion and silence with the ancient, bordered by the cold and stormy Baltic tides. With his wife spending her days in school, Victor Mucho learned to surf, chartering himself against the crashing sea and discovering his own frailty. The waves sculpted him like they had carved the limestone pillars of the Raukas backdropped behind him over a millennia ago.
Leaving his home in Tennessee proved difficult. Homesickness fogged his vision, wanting to return to the life he’d built. The tides pushed him into eerie loneliness on an island that spoke a different language. Then came the winter. The crashing waves that soundtracked his days crested, reaching near-freezing temperatures. Every so often, the winds faded and the waters stilled, and the island would sit stoically in the dark, crisp air. This 14 song album is shaped by that space. That feeling of vastness and isolation in a closed-in world. Every day was a study and acceptance of weakness, found in the waves and in one’s heart. Every day asked him whether he should wait for home or to wake and build a new one. Victor Mucho reckoned with love and identity, forged by the frigid Baltic Sea and quenched by fires on the beach.
He brought his mandolin to Sweden, and upon his arrival, bought an old guitar from a woman on the island. The guitar turned out to be the songwriting vessel. The mandolin served as the natural texture added in the recording process. The songs came to life in a dark bedroom next to the sea, at times lit by the moon, other times by only a candle. The window facing 221º SW, straight towards his home in Nashville. Except for “Apart from You,” composed in Silverhättan, the northwesterly tower of the Visby Ringmur, or “made a fire,” birthed on a chilly fall evening around a campfire at the northern tip of the sheep island Fårö, adjacent to Gotland. Fårö housed many moments of the songwriting process. Days and nights camping and traversing were always accompanied by his guitar. Fårö was also the home of legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. It was the place where he gained inspiration from the land and shot many of his films. Bergman’s bleak outlook of the world seems founded by the rigid lithic landscape of the island. Victor Mucho’s entire life had centered on optimism leading up to his time in Visby. The collision of the cold waves and the solemn solitude of Bergman’s world is married to that clashing personal worldview of hope throughout Moonlight in Visby and Victor Mucho’s search for identity. And those worldviews collide at the lighthouse on Fårö; the point where a calm, quiet sandy beach meets the rocky strand, and the rigid harsh landscape of Fårö.
Once the bedroom recordings were finished, it was time to take them into the studio. Through mutual connections, Victor Mucho met producer and Swedish Grammy-nominated Tobias Fröberg, who lives and works out of Sandkvie Studio, directly in the center of the Visby Harbor. Fröberg has had great success as a producer in Sweden and his own international career as a lo-fi indie artist. With their similar taste in music, they immediately clicked.
The studio, just a walk down the coast from Victor Mucho’s home, made it naturally easy to record without any rigid schedule or time frame. Two of the songs on the album were written and recorded in the last week of his time on Gotland when he felt the weight of the move back home. Sandkvie studio is in an old warehouse next to the ferry terminal. Victor Mucho always felt the presence of those large ships looming behind him, knowing one day soon he would board one and leave for his old home of Nashville. That underlying knowledge propelled him to finish the album before returning home. He also leaned heavily on Axel Fagerberg, his long-time friend and expert percussionist from Stockholm. Fagerberg’s fingerprints are all over the album, adding a wide range of textures from glockenspiel to fretless bass, background vocals, and much more. The recording process as a whole was a very authentic, unplanned, natural progression.
Moonlight in Visby was not initially intended to be an album, but simply songwriting as a means to process a changing life and identity at the time. Only in hindsight did the story become clear.
Victor Mucho, Bedroom / Lo-fi Pop, indie folk, Tennessee, Gotland Sweden, orchestrated folk, dreamy, Brian Macdonald, Judah & the Lion, "so terribly hurt" ft. Molly Parden, debut album, "Moonlight in Visby",
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