Backworld - Of Silver Sleep

Label : Harbinger House
Catalog# : HCD 004
Country : UK
Released . 2001
Style : Neofolk

Tracklisting :

01 Hands of Ash
02 The Sparrows
03 Little Red Stars
04 Melody
05 Gospel of Mary
06 A Place in Heaven
07 A Shepherd's Tale
08 The Tide
09 The Golden Path
10 Lullaby Land
11 Of Silver Sleep

"This is a highly accomplished work from a talented artist with a seemingly effortless delivery that is at once simple and masterly in the best (neo)-folk tradition.
The 11-track album features Joseph Budenholzer and friends including Michael Cashmore who plays 12-string guitar on 'A Shepherd's Tale' for which he also wrote the music. The other friends are Julia Kent (cello), Connie Petruk (vocals, piano), Paul Geluso (bass), Laura Cromwell (drums), and Claudia Chopek (violin). B'eirth of In Gowan Ring also contributes a recorder solo on the title and closing track, 'Of Silver Sleep', which was co-written with Julia Kent.
With a nod to psychedelic folk, Joseph's distinctive style is hallmarked by a soothing voice and twinkling guitar, but the attractive sound is often belied by dark and disturbing themes, although this CD seems less dark than some previous material.
'Hands of Ash' is a tender and moving song about the reuniting of two ghostly lovers. 'The Sparrows' is a deathbed song underlining the ultimate loneliness of existence as an individual human, with shades of Wordsworth and ancient folk beliefs as sparrows fly away with the soul. 'Melody' concerns the annual birth, death and rebirth of crops, another archetypical theme from the age before we all became buried in glass and concrete. And yet our insulation from the natural environment cannot alter the reality of human futility as we are reminded by 'The Tide', a poetic underlining of the old adage about time and tide." FluxEuropa

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