176: Blue Lake - Cut Paper
I've been so caught up in the most recent release from Blue Lake - the glistening Weft - that I hadn't even clocked that it wasn't a 'proper' album release. Though it's formed of only five songs, it contains more than half-an-hour of music, and holds itself together with a mesmerising sense of grace and purpose.
Following swiftly on its heels though comes The Animal, not only a brand new Blue Lake album, but also the first that Jason Dungan has recorded with a full band, a full five albums into his burgeoning catalogue.
Texan-born but now relocated to Copenhagen, Dungan makes tender, spirited instrumental music, beautifully detailed landscapes that seemingly carry little pieces of the many places he's called home in the cracks and blurry edges of his sound; something wholly captivating.
“I’m quite fascinated in thinking about humans more as part of the animal environment and not as something that’s so separated into a “human” realm, or sitting on top of a hierarchical pyramid. So the Animal is also me, or us - that we are just living, existing, in the same way as a piece of moss or a sparrow or a cow."
Once again released via the ever-excellent Tonal Union label, The Animal features 10 new songs and was made in collaboration with Danish producer Aske Zidore, and mixed by Jeff Zeigler (The War on Drugs). The full band approach means that the record is graced by double bass, cello, clarinet, viola and drums, all flowing and fully formed into something suitably inventive and nourishing.
Lead single 'Cut Paper' is out now, a gorgeous four-minutes or so that drifts through varying places and vistas; part sweeping Americana, part Nordic odyssey - a unfurling of new practices that exemplifies the communal approach that ripples through the album as a while:
"'Cut Paper' probably exemplifies for me how this record is going to some new places, by working with the band. We have very different musical references - I might have an American guitarist or band in mind - the others in the band, as Europeans, have basically never listened to country music. So they’re thinking about jazz, or an element of classical music. These gaps and overlaps, for me, give the collective approach a stronger flavor - ultimately, for me, it means we’re drilling down into our own sound, instead of working within a specific genre or idiom.”
We've got to wait until October for the full thing but get lost in 'Cut Paper' below right now.
Pre-order The Animal via Bandcamp here
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