"With my face pressed to the fecund earth / Water dripping from Juniper and birch / Crawling on my hands and knees along the unlit trail..."
The droning darkness, breathing organica of "A Candle", from Northern California artist Fletcher Tucker and from his new album "Kin" out August 15th via Gnome Life Records/Adagio 830, is not for the faint of art. There might be moments of uncomfortableness as droning sounds might make you feel uneasy and the dips into a sort of meditative vocal style, layered (maybe) in eerie ways might have you looking out of your window late at night. I will tell you that as compelling as the mix of "breathing " instruments that Tucker incorporates in his hybridic folk sounds like Swedish bagpipes, pump organ, elder and bamboo flutes along with the ambient sensations brought to bear by Mellotron saxophone and flute tapes cast the kind of imagery and atmospheres that might exist in films made by Robert Eggers or Paul Thomas Anderson. For me, the unease I feel would not be a daily listen because it might feel so histrionic as to drive me close to the precipice but it is a place that I might go to on occasion to inspire uncomfortable stories in my head, that need to come out. I think the chanting style vocals or rustic kind of speak done by elders long ago can't help but put your mind in dark forests. Coincidentally I live near such dark forests.
Specifically to "A Candle" and from LINER NOTES:
[Mixed and mastered by Chuck Johnson, Fletcher plays bamboo flute, melodeon, Svensk säckpipa (Swedish bagpipes), percussion, 12-string electric guitar, field recordings, along with providing voices. Spencer Owen fills out the percussion, while Sean Smith's heavy bass riffs ground the song in dark, rich soil. Mariam Wallentin's voice lends an incomparable warmth and depth to the proceedings as well.]
The album "Kin" was composed in the Big Sur backcountry and features guests Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Chuck Johnson (Western Vinyl), and Mariam Wallentin (Fire! Orchestra), and others.
"A Candle" lyrics
https://gnomelife.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/gnome_life/#
https://www.fletchertucker.com/
Fletcher Tucker (born 1983) is an interdisciplinary artist and practitioner of animistic, earth-reverent skills and philosophies, residing on the unceded Esselen tribal lands now known as Big Sur, California. Since 2005, Tucker has released nine full-length albums of music, under various project names, on labels based in Germany, Sweden, Japan, and the United States. Tucker's most recent records, released under his given name, explore relationality –– aural and poetic expressions of his ever deepening relationships to place, ancestors, ceremonial practice, and kinfolk (human and more-than-human).
With a foundational palette comprised of “breathing" instruments -- including Swedish bagpipes, pump organ, elder and bamboo flutes, Mellotron saxophone and flute tapes -- beneath chanted, animistic verse, Tucker's new album Kin, announced today for an August 15th release date on Gnome Life Records, endeavors to exhale enchantment back into the living world.
The album features collaborations with a few esteemed friends – Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Mariam Wallentin (Fire! Orchestra, Mariam the Believer), Chuck Johnson, Sean Smith (LFZ), and Spencer Owen – enriching Kin's domain of animacy and enchantment.
Tucker is the founder of the analog record label Gnome Life Records –– releasing experimental and ambient music, outsider folk, and spoken word by West Coast artists since 2005 (including works by Robbie Basho, Daniel Higgs, Little Wings and many more). In addition to his artistic work, Tucker is the co-founder of Wildtender, an organization dedicated to helping people cultivate intimacy with the earth, and reciprocal relationships with the natural world. Tucker is also teaching faculty at the Esalen Institute and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.
With my face pressed to the fecund earth
Water dripping from Juniper and birch
Crawling on my hands and knees along the unlit trail
Raven calling from a hollowed snag
Spirit lingering in the scooped out dirt
Moonlight stretches my shape across the hill
With a shadow tall as the forest now
I breathe the complete night into my lungs
Hold it there, until it forms a song
A song like a river of wind
Flowing through pine boughs at dusk
Boulders churning in the storm swollen creek
Cicadas ringing bells from the canopy
Standing at the edge of the black lake
Recalling banished spirits of place
Old ways abandoned and forgot
Rituals overgrown and lost
But in the clearing
In an empty house
I see a candle
Burning low
Water dripping from Juniper and birch
Crawling on my hands and knees along the unlit trail
Raven calling from a hollowed snag
Spirit lingering in the scooped out dirt
Moonlight stretches my shape across the hill
With a shadow tall as the forest now
I breathe the complete night into my lungs
Hold it there, until it forms a song
A song like a river of wind
Flowing through pine boughs at dusk
Boulders churning in the storm swollen creek
Cicadas ringing bells from the canopy
Standing at the edge of the black lake
Recalling banished spirits of place
Old ways abandoned and forgot
Rituals overgrown and lost
But in the clearing
In an empty house
I see a candle
Burning low
Track credits:
Fletcher Tucker: bamboo flute, melodeon (pump organ), Svensk säckpipa (Swedish bagpipes), percussion, 12-string electric guitar, field recordings, voice, recording.
Sean Smith (LFZ): electric bass guitar.
Spencer Owen: drums.
Mariam Wallentin (Fire! Orchestra, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Mariam the Believer): voice.
Chuck Johnson: mixing, mastering.
Fletcher Tucker: bamboo flute, melodeon (pump organ), Svensk säckpipa (Swedish bagpipes), percussion, 12-string electric guitar, field recordings, voice, recording.
Sean Smith (LFZ): electric bass guitar.
Spencer Owen: drums.
Mariam Wallentin (Fire! Orchestra, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Mariam the Believer): voice.
Chuck Johnson: mixing, mastering.
Fletcher Tucker Album Release Shows
8/15 - Los Angeles, CA - Philosophical Research Society
8/16 - Berkeley, CA - Berkeley Alembic
8/17 - Big Sur, CA - Big Sur Grange Hall
8/15 - Los Angeles, CA - Philosophical Research Society
8/16 - Berkeley, CA - Berkeley Alembic
8/17 - Big Sur, CA - Big Sur Grange Hall
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://gnomelife.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/gnome_life/#
https://www.fletchertucker.com/
Fletcher Tucker (born 1983) is an interdisciplinary artist and practitioner of animistic, earth-reverent skills and philosophies, residing on the unceded Esselen tribal lands now known as Big Sur, California. Since 2005, Tucker has released nine full-length albums of music, under various project names, on labels based in Germany, Sweden, Japan, and the United States. Tucker's most recent records, released under his given name, explore relationality –– aural and poetic expressions of his ever deepening relationships to place, ancestors, ceremonial practice, and kinfolk (human and more-than-human).
With a foundational palette comprised of “breathing" instruments -- including Swedish bagpipes, pump organ, elder and bamboo flutes, Mellotron saxophone and flute tapes -- beneath chanted, animistic verse, Tucker's new album Kin, announced today for an August 15th release date on Gnome Life Records, endeavors to exhale enchantment back into the living world.
The album features collaborations with a few esteemed friends – Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Mariam Wallentin (Fire! Orchestra, Mariam the Believer), Chuck Johnson, Sean Smith (LFZ), and Spencer Owen – enriching Kin's domain of animacy and enchantment.
Tucker is the founder of the analog record label Gnome Life Records –– releasing experimental and ambient music, outsider folk, and spoken word by West Coast artists since 2005 (including works by Robbie Basho, Daniel Higgs, Little Wings and many more). In addition to his artistic work, Tucker is the co-founder of Wildtender, an organization dedicated to helping people cultivate intimacy with the earth, and reciprocal relationships with the natural world. Tucker is also teaching faculty at the Esalen Institute and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.
Composed while hiking hundreds of miles through the remote Big Sur backcountry, Kin’s ritual text (lyrics) evokes and invokes Tucker’s inner and outer journeys across uncanny trails of kinship with place. Tucker cultivates communion with mycelium and decaying stumps, blizzards and waterfalls, his own infant and ancestral spirits – and offers each one voice and tone, a chance for Mystery to speak for itself. Within Kin’s incantations you will find: a mythopoetic retelling of Tucker’s daughter’s birth as high ceremony; recollections of moments of radical clarity and aliveness in the wild; feral Zen philosophy; and an ornate description of Tucker’s own syncretic altar.
The ancient, psychospiritual technology of chanting is favored over singing throughout the album, while close, uncanny harmonies serve to widen gateways into liminal realms. Voices float atop clear, deep pools of acoustic drones. The surface of this water shimmers and ripples with rhythmic and melodic disturbances: sonic offerings of bells, bowls, gongs, chimes, analog synthesizers, 12-string electric guitars, pedal steel, bass, humla (bowed Swedish mountain zither), all manner of drums, clacking oak branches, and rattling leaves.
Fletcher Tucker, freak folk, psychedelic folk, rustic, chamber folk, alt rock, alt folk, meditative music, rustic folk music, ambient music, tribal atmospheres, ceremonial music, drone music, "A Candle" (Official Video),
The ancient, psychospiritual technology of chanting is favored over singing throughout the album, while close, uncanny harmonies serve to widen gateways into liminal realms. Voices float atop clear, deep pools of acoustic drones. The surface of this water shimmers and ripples with rhythmic and melodic disturbances: sonic offerings of bells, bowls, gongs, chimes, analog synthesizers, 12-string electric guitars, pedal steel, bass, humla (bowed Swedish mountain zither), all manner of drums, clacking oak branches, and rattling leaves.
Fletcher Tucker, freak folk, psychedelic folk, rustic, chamber folk, alt rock, alt folk, meditative music, rustic folk music, ambient music, tribal atmospheres, ceremonial music, drone music, "A Candle" (Official Video),
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