karu:17, CD (deluxe digipak) 9 audio tracks, (p) 2010
OUT NOW Release date: 15/02/2010
Electro-Pastoral Music...
"Bridge Carols" is the meeting of two artists with unique timeless approaches to music. Neo-Americana folk singer Laura Gibson is gifted with a soft and singular voice (not unlike the voices of Josephine Foster and Joanna Newsom) and writes songs that could date back a century or foretell a future rural life. Electronician Ethan Rose is vested in antiquated instruments and technologies - a sonic recycler who, out of the old, has been creating a new form of ambient music.
Both are from Portland, Oregon, USA. Their collaboration started with ambient backgrounds and Gibson vocalizing around unused bits of verses from her notebooks. Around these quasi-melodies, Rose has woven ambiences using acoustic sounds (mostly strings, but also piano and bells) and very light electronic textures. Then, Gibson redeveloped her vocalizations to fully inhabit that shared space. Finally, Rose recombined her interventions into new poems. This process has resulted in a CD of insidiously beautiful electro-pastoral music entitled "Bridge Carols".
Critics have lauded Laura Gibson's latest release "Beast of Seasons" ("a quiet masterpiece" - NPR). Accompanying herself on nylon-strung guitar, the singer leaves few hearts unmoved, and her vocal style belongs to no specific tradition, except maybe the one that calls for searching inside one's self for the means of communicating with one's external world.
For the past decade, Ethan Rose has been releasing records, composing film music, performing around the world, creating sound installations, and collaborating with numerous artists. In 2009, he released the album "Oaks", a tribute to an old theatre organ, on Baskaru.
"Bridge Carols" is being co-released by Baskaru in Europe, Holocene in the US, and Headz in Japan. The six-page digipak design and bonus track are exclusive to the Baskaru edition.
