Exclusive - Brierfield Flood Press Australian pressing limited to 500 hand-numbered copies, with embossed covers and a stamped postcard.
Another stunner from Australian ambient-folk songer, Hana Stretton, following 2023 WOE favourite, Soon. Three years separates those two albums, though they feel very born of the same emotional perspective, a subtle but rich connection of ebbing synthesiser, mellifluous vocals, twinkling strings, creaking samples and layered field recordings that take on a ghostly symphonic quality. And just what kind of ghosts are these? Stretton has herself described the album as a reflection on ‘ecological grief’, a feeling many will be able to relate to amidst a tenth successive summer of rising temperatures, abundant wild fires and scorched habitats, haunted by the debased land that surrounds us. It’s a sobering thought, though Stretton’s reflections on such things are nothing but beautiful and dignified, and certainly not rendered as any kind of pronouncement or directive - these are impressionistic compositions that favour the quiet, that bury multitracked choral vocals low in the mix that bloom like a rising sun or move in and out of the stereofield as mimicking the waves of the Pacific Ocean next to which it was recorded. The environment has clearly bled through into these songs, a kind of connective tissue mirrored in the use of field recordings - in this sense, we feel Stretton within her world, shaped by the environment around her and channeling it outwards into something potentially healing and quietly hopeful. It’s a skill she part way borrows from collaborator Phil Elverum (The Microphones/Mt. Eerie), and is also evident in the lo-fi hum of early 21st Century ‘freak-folk’ pioneers Little Wings and Jana Hunter, but there’s no doubting whose voice and vision we are witness to here. It feels somewhat wrong to describe music as meticulously conceived as this is as effortless, but there is a unique ease to how Stretton communicates, like she caught these songs from a raised hand in the wind and turned them our way, and like the environment from which they are birthed, they seem to go on before and after us. We’re fortunate to be stood in her direction. **NOTE** - this is the limited edition Brierfield Flood Press edition with embossed sleeve, available only via the label and WOE.
FFO: The Microphones, Mt. Eerie, Little Wings, Sea Oleena, Vashti Bunyan
