Sand Snowman/Steven Wilson A Dolls Eyes Clear colour vinyl LP ltd ed 100 only
£
40
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53
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Description
Sand Snowman ltd edition clear colour 180g vinyl LP (Ltd ed of 100 only) + Red Rag Blues bonus LP. Release date July 7th. These are sure to go quickly as last collaborations with Steven Wilson and Moonswift have sold out quickly,
2015 sees the welcome return to Tonefloat of Gavan Kearney, better known as Sand Snowman, after 2011s The World's Not Worth It (tf118). While releasing Otherness and Autonal (the latter as Sand Snowman and Moonswift and Steven Wilson collaberations), Gavan started working on this album. As he says "Not so much in the literal sense but thinking about precisely what I wanted to do and how best to do it. There is a danger of tailoring one's work to the assumed limitations of one's listeners, as well as the creative/imaginative death that comes from the 'stock response', i.e. knowing that this quiet section will inevitably lead to a loud 'climactic' bit as surely as the Hollywood hero will save himself, the girl and the world."
The result is A Doll's Eyes, Gavan's "least folk-like album to date, despite the presence of typical Sand Snowman ingredients - ubiquitous acoustic guitar, psychedelic sound worlds, disquieting dream sequences. There is less of a nature mystery presence despite, or perhaps because, of my moving from inner London to rural Kent (from the imagined countryside to the actual one), with an emphasis on human consciousness, not least the issue of how our sense of selves is instilled by educational programs (programmed, as with computers) and personality as much as history being a nightmare we
need to awake from, that is, we are dolls that need to be unmade."
"With A Doll's Eyes I had an opportunity to let the influence of what is commonly termed post punk (possibly my favorite era of popular music and typified, for me, by Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, PIL, Killing Joke, amongst many others ) play a more notable role, lending an austerity and occasional violence that I felt would best convey this sentiment. This also allowed for a sardonic and slightly mocking comment on what I regard as an adolescent popular culture (that currently prevails) with that difficult age seeming to start at 6 and end with senility, and signified by a shallow obsession with all things dark (mistaken for profundity by people who perhaps haven't experienced enough genuine darkness to value life and light) and an emphasis (typified by gaming, social media, photo shopped selfies and pullulating porn usage) on solitary gratification (a mass of joysticks jerked before screens)."
"Where gentleness is employed (notably on I Lock The Door Upon Myself, and the title track) it is to suggest introspection, solitude and a withdrawal from the vicissitudes of physical reality (though this, too, is potentially another lonely form of solitary gratification, with one being in danger of dreams and idealizations alienating oneself from an ability to act and other people). I Lock The Door Upon Myself (the title is taken from a haunting, beautiful painting by Fernand Khnopff) has much in common with my previous work and perhaps suggests a nature environment (I like to think of it having the freewheeling imaginative play, on a sunlit green meadow, that comes naturally to the pre-school child and that adults, alas, seldom access without the assistance of Art and/or intoxicants)."
"The title track the A Doll's Eyes song sequence) started life as a piano piece. As I'm not really a piano player I spent about a year both writing and memorizing it (to a standard that I could record it, after which I promptly forgot it). This was always going to be a song cycle in the spirit, though not the style, of the Lied of Schubert or Schumann. The music that I love and identify with most is that of Ravel, Debussy & Scriabin (not that I think my work sounds anything like them, or indeed could) and I'm always searching for a musical means (within my musical means) of conveying some of that mystery, otherworldliness and graceful, seemingly effortless complexity that I hear in their music. As I can neither write for or financially afford to hire orchestral players, I must rely on my own technically limited means to attain a sound pallet of similar scale and refinement. Impossible, perhaps but it keeps me re-examining and re-imagining the possibilities of the guitar and instrument combinations."
"This song cycle is a personal high point for me as an artist, and I felt it important to follow it (and end the album) on a different route, allowing the influence of In A Silent Way era Miles Davis and Mwandishi-era Herbie Hancock to lead somewhere that isn't exactly upbeat, and maintains some of the neurotic, obsessive rhythmic patterning of Give Me The Child, but allows me/the listener to depart from what has gone before, into the unknown."
A Doll's Eyes features vocal contributions by Moonswift, Amandine Ferrari, Lydia Santamaria and Jamie Nevermind. The first 300 copies (100 on clear vinyl, 200 on black vinyl - both 180 grams of course) are accompanied by Red Rag Blues, a full length 6-track instrumental LP, that was written and recorded over the same years. The album (designed by Carl Glover).
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