Cassette with accompanying booklet
... and in February we somehow now are. Isik Kural, a Turkish expat now based in Glasgow (via stints in Miami studying sound design and then New York), debuts for RVNG with this twelve song collection comprised of piano loops, nylon-string guitars, samples and a translucent soft-focus songwriting. Kural has a slip of a voice, an aspect accentuated when collaborator Stephanie Roxanne Ward sings on three of the songs, her sometimes sing-song anti-folk style, sometimes deeply emotive confidence a neat contrast to Kural's whispered poetry. I was surprised to learn this was recorded at Green Door Studios, Glasgow's famed outpost for experimental productions, simply because it sounds so private and serene. If ever there were a lockdown album, i thought it would be this, cocooned as it feels in its own diaphanous universe of sleep. It's not easy to make music so apparently unaware of the forces of the surrounding world. When you're able to do it in collaboration with others, i think that's what we understand as vision. Thanks to RVNG for providing these copies of a very short cassette run, packaged in their typically classy way.
