CHRISTIAN LOFFLER - 'LYS'

Formats

• KI025V - 2xLPs

  194491667436

• KI025CD - CD

  194491667382

Details

*VINYL BACK INSTOCK* Lys, Christian Löffler’s newest album, serves as a contrast to Graal, its predecessor. Whereas the latter is the result of a six-month period spent largely on the road in between live shows, the former is a studio release in the truest sense, recorded and compiled in the serenity of Löffler home studio, immersed in the woodland nature that formed the basis for A Forest, his first attempt at the long-player format back in 2012. Rather than capturing a specific moment in time or emotion, Lys is a selection of Löffler’s favorite productions from the past three years, carefully compiled into one enchanting and deeply moving listening experience. The sounds of Lys can be traced back to late 2016, as Löffler settled back into his studio following Mare, but it really began to take shape in the wake of a creative breakthrough in 2018. Struggling with writer’s block, Löffler travelled to Scandinavia where he attended several galleries, only to return home bubbling with new ideas, visual and musical. Graal, with its drawing-based artwork, reflected this rich period of initial creativity and opened the door to Lys, on which Löffler continues the narrative with 12 of his more contemplative and introspective studio adventures. Integral in the process was his painting of these earlier drawings, cementing a connection between his visual and musical work. “When making music I always have pictures and colours on my mind,” he explains. “I have a folder on my computer with inspiring pictures that I collect for when I’m in the studio.” What unifies these songs is the process behind them. Waking up early, Löffler headed for a run before sitting down in his studio for 8am. He’d set his mind back to the early morning, and reflect on how the light would come through his window to create a beautiful assortment of colors on his wall. Inspired by the inherent beauty of this process, he found himself painting these patterns and then communicating his feelings in his music. “I realised that the light is different in the north of Germany, and this became an overall theme for the album,” he explains. “Before I had Mare, and Forest, and now it’s become light,” hence the album’s title, meaning “light” in Danish. Conceptually, the album captures how his feelings evolved during a day of working on the album, beginning in the morning and ending as his finished his painting in the evening. To capture his innermost feelings, he once again puts his voice front and centre. It also features the vocals of Menke, a young Swedish singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist; and Mohna, who has been a staple on his recent tours. “She’s part of my musical world and so I wanted to have her on the album,” Löffler explains. A natural calmness and beauty pervades the album, even on the two club-ready tracks, “Roth” and “Sun,” sketches from Mare but reworked to fit Löffler’s vision. “Versailles,” and “Lys,” two of the three lead singles, reflect the light and airy sound that Löffler envisioned at the beginning of the recording process. Meanwhile, “Noah,” the third single, stands for the record’s darker, heavier side, driven forward by Löffler own vocals. Along with “The End,” a final focus track, these singles came together to form the backbone of the album. Lys is coming out via Ki Records, Löffler’s own label, launched in 2009 as a platform for the music that inspires him.

Tracks

1. Farr
2. Versailles (Hold)
3. Wei?
4. The End (feat. Josephine Philip
5. Bergen
6. Noah
7. Lys (feat. Menke)
8. Sun
9. Ballet (feat. finn.)
10. Roth (feat. Mohna)
11. Map
12. F?r Immer

Press

RIYL: Kiasmos, DJ Koze, Rival Consoles, Max Cooper, Moderat.

Audio & Video

JACK HUES - 'PRIMITIF'

Formats

• DCRC015 - 2xLPs

  5024545879117

• DCR016 - CD

  5024545886429

Details

20th March 2020 sees the release of ’PRIMITIF' the debut album from Jack Hues, the Canterbury-based singer-songwriter and composer best known as the frontman for Wang Chung. The 16 track double album features the three tracks released so far Whitstable Beach, Winter and A Long Time as well as eleven other originals and two cover versions including an eight and half minute electric Miles Davis influenced take on Lana Del Rey’s Video Games. Despite having a career that started in 1977 and which has included composing for Hollywood movies (To Live & Die In LA and The Guardian for William Friedkin, The Walking Dead), John Peel sessions and top ten singles across the globe, ‘Primitif’ is the first solo album that Jack has released. In a ‘mission statement' for the album Jack explains more about the record, why it’s a double album and why it’s taken so long to venture out under his own name…. "PRIMITIF is a collection of songs about love, loss, grief and despair... but also a summation of more than 50 years of obsession with Music. A lot of the songs were written and recorded in a 3 month period at the beginning of 2018. The songs are inter-connected musically and lyrically, sometimes intentionally, more often not. I didn’t intend to make an album when I began recording, still less a double album, but the intensity of the outpouring of emotion I experienced made me want to create something big - almost too big to be encompassed in a single sitting. The songs came to me and I wrote into them, extending, expanding, creating something that would be a journey akin to the albums I listened to in the 60’s and 70’s. So much has been written about the demise of “The Album”. I wanted this to be a stand for “The Album” being the ultimate means of expression for an Artist and the ultimate listening experience. I thought about “Blonde on Blonde”, “The Beatles”, “Wheels of Fire”, “Exile on Main Street”, “Sign of the Times” - the physical presence of those records and how you never get to end of them, can never quite encompass them, so PRIMITIF had to be a double album. PRIMITIF is designed for vinyl, designed as 4 sides of music, 4 songs per side to be listened to in sequence or separately. It begins in my childhood and ends... well, it never ends… “ Jack will be playing a very special show to launch the album at the Gulbenkian Theatre on March 21st in his adopted home town of Canterbury with the band that made the record featuring members of local psychedelic heroes Syd Arthur. 

Tracks

SIDE 1
The Look Of Love
Whitstable Beach
A Long Time
Cut

SIDE 2
Winter
Diamond Ring
Spring
Margate Train

SIDE 3
You Are The One I Love
Astrology
Summer
Stand In A Place Of Love

SIDE 4
An Ordinary Man
You Will Kill The One You Love
Autumn
Video Games

Press

4 page feature in Prog magazine

Audio & Video

Jack Hues - Whitstable Beach from Dawn Chorus Recording Company on Vimeo.