2022 repress
Out of print since before WOE was even an idea, Concentric Circles' maiden release is finally back in the world to remind us what an opening shot it was. The story is vaguely familiar now. Woking born, San Fran-based home-recording artist, Carola Baer, commits some songs to tape sometime in 1991, making just the one copy, presumably only for personal use. Said tape gets lost in the shifts of time a life necessitates, before being rediscovered in a Portland thrift store many years later by a newly enquiring mind, one Jed Bindeman (then of Freedom to Spend, now also CC). A true sliding doors moment - one minute either way, and it may have been missed completely. It's unusual it was missed in the first instance, tbqh, though perhaps 1991 wasn't quite the moment for music of this kind. A more fitting moment may have been around those early halcyon days of 4AD, for The Story of Valerie is possessed of a similar ethereal majesty to This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance et al, haunted, haunting, a whole lot of lacey dramatics. Yet there's also a very obvious DIY oddness to Baer's sound which shifts this into less histrionic territory, caught somewhere between Virigina Astley pastoralism and folksy intimacy. Strangely, though they're operating in different styles, i was also reminded of the Saskia 7" Stroom released, another piece of music rescued from a thought-lost home made cassette. It's about the emotional connection of private communications with imagined audiences of one, of expression free of self-conscious restraint. Pre-mirror phase music making, all Lacanian purity. Needless to say, true one off material..
