Paper Dollhouse - Aeonflower

[shadowplay]

I'd like to draw folks attention to this wonderful new LP on the truly righteous (and based near my neuk of Southside Glasgow) Night School records, which as to be one of the very best young labels around.

I adored Paper Dollhouse's first LP A Box Painted Black. It was more of Kohl eyed lofi folk affair and while it did contain many an unfolding secret, it perhaps isn't a record with super wide appeal beyond wyrd folk aficionados.

The new LP is much, more ambitious and diverse, but soehow all of a piece; running from catchy synthpop, to looping bass excursions, into the border regions of Diamanda Galas' territory, into choral Morricone drift, Mysterious Bulgaria, brushes with concrete and ambient space, before falling, falling, falling into sad eyed drone folk. A great LP to sit in your favourite chair, look out the window and let it all unfold across your headspace.

(((((((((((((((((((Hear the lot here!)))))))))))))))))))))))

Btw if you don't like vinyl but want a physical product or maybe you want to feed your Becker Mexico, you can buy it as one of those new fangled Compact Cassettes (100 ONLY) with free DL for a tenner from Finders Keepers or Bleep.

If this is REALLY your thing you can also get a lovely hand screened and numbered poster (edition of 20) by Folklore Tapes David Chatton Barker. I was powerless to resist!

D

[niemand]

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[shadowplay]

I gave this a listen.

This album sounds to me like the soundtrack of an anxious and cerebral Cold War era thriller in Berlin that features a lot of triple-crossings. Or possibly a film about the Antichrist.

That would work!

D

[Slow-Pop]

I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive, but I loved the first record and can't wait to hear this newest offering.

[fakeplasticdreams]

This is really good stuff! thanks for the recommendation David.

[whisperit]

hmm, that pink cassette will make a nice gift for a certain tape enthusiast's birthday

[shadowplay]

Also the mythology-inspired track titles are a tremendous bonus for me.

Doc do you know Dead can Dance? Their neo classical, neo early, neo ethic/folk music has a lot of that sort of reference as well as some incredible music, lyrics and singing..

In the off chance you don't know them, here's a wee taste;

I'll divide into Brendan Singing and Lisa singing.

Brendan singing (think a bruised Scott Walker croon)

How Fortunate the Man With none (from Into The Labyrinth and basically a Brecht cover)

Anywhere out of the World (From Within the Realm of a Dying Sun)

In the Kingdom of the Blind the One-Eyed Are Kings (from the Serpents Egg)

The Cardinal Sin (from Spleen and Ideal)

Black Sun (from Aion)

The Arcane (from the EP Garden of Arcane Delights) This EOP and the eponymous debut LP are very good but they are more of a post punk sort of thing. Excellent but more a pupa stage.


Lisa Singing. (think GENUINE Siren)

The Host of Seraphim (from The Serpents Egg)

Summoning of the Muse (from Within the Realm of a Dying Sun)

Cantara(from Within the Realm of a Dying Sun)

Mesmerismfrom (Spleen and Ideal)

The Promised Womb (from Aion)

Ocean(from Dead Can Dance)

It's quite easy to be blasé about DCD these days (since you can go listen to pretty much any exotic music and get a feel for it) but back in ye olde 80's period these seemed SO exotic and magical. They still do IMO and introducing the wee Shadowplay's to them has been one of the joys.

P.S there is a coupla other LP's but they aren't as good for the most part and I really struggle to say anything particularly positive about Spiritchaser. TheLisa Gerrard Solo and collaborative LP's are good (and well used in film scores) andBrendan's solo records have a lot to recommend them.

D

[niemand]

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[shadowplay]

Ah yes, the '80s, I've heard of that decade... time of pointy shredders, spandex, and Jon and Vangelis. I just assumed the '80s were made up by society as a joke, are you telling me they really happened?

I gave those a listen (well I'm at "Cantara" now... this one might be my favorite actually) and I have to say, if you have access to her voice why the hell did that guy sing at all? Her half of your playlist is far superior in my book, not only because of her voice but I think it's aged better.

I am finding myself reminded of all the '70s and '80s fantasy/mythology/war movies my grandfather had us watch as kids (like Lou Ferrigno's Hercules and *edited for television* Conan the Barbarian... pretty sure there was one in there about Jason and the Argonauts... also Ben Hur and the Ten Commandments).

I looked up their Wikipedia page and it reports that allmusic called them "as goth as it gets," which made me laugh.

Edit: OK I'm on Ocean now. Dude Lisa's stuff is way better. Way better.

I like both voices (and Brendan's songs a great deal) but I do understand the shock and awe of Lisa's pipes. You might be as well going straight to The Mirror Pool her first solo album.

Ah yes, the '80s, I've heard of that decade... time of pointy shredders, spandex, and Jon and Vangelis. I just assumed the '80s were made up by society as a joke, are you telling me they really happened?

.

Hand on heart my 80's contained none of those things, nor any of the sort of clichés you see in; I 1982 TV shows, with 'z list celeb talking heads. When I look at the 80's I see that my lot won and continue to inspire good music today, while the forces of darkness are left sitting on some shelf of irony where they belong. To be honest I think OSG's beloved 90's has dated terribly.

On the other hand, I am very down with some Ray Harryhausen (Oh woe is me at those terrible modern Titans films).

I looked up their Wikipedia page and it reports that allmusic called them "as goth as it gets," which made me laugh.

I used to get really pissed off at getting called a goth mainly because I was what I was before anyone called it Goth and I didn't dress in stuff from gothik emporia like The Specimen anyway. However I now see it as a bit of a laugh but I'd call DCD Gothic but not Goth.

D

[niemand]

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[shadowplay]

Ray Harryhausen! It WAS Jason and the Argonauts! I remember those skeletons!!

I used to get really pissed off at getting called a goth mainly because I was what I was before anyone called it Goth and I didn't dress in stuff from gothik emporia like The Specimen anyway. However I now see it as a bit of a laugh and I'd call DCD Gothic but not Goth.

So you were Goth... before it was cool?

Times like this I'm glad I'm communicating through the internet, across an ocean, well out of reach of a smack in the head or kick in the ass.

Before it was anything, don't know if it was ever cool or if cool matters because once upon a time things were considered cool that really aren't and things that weren't cool have become cool and no doubt the positions will swap round again. I was too poor to go to the punk emporia and I had little time for the Southern fancy dress, get a photo with a Japanese tourist punk thing anyway, so I just took the clothes I had and dyed them all grey (aiming black) in a bath (the bath being successfully dyed black). I was more Joy Division than Alien Sex Fiend but I did end up with an enormous dead crow on my head for a bit before I were back to a Corps cut short back and sides.

D

[shadowplay]

New album 'The Sky Looks Different Here' out today. I'm just about to put it on for the third time, beautiful stuff, I love it. Can't see a full stream but there's samples at Bleep where it's record of the week. At Bleep you get an instant download when you buy the vinyl. Sold out at few places already.

Paper Dollhouse - Haze the one full tester track out there

Paper Dollhouse unveils a freshly rendered, new ambient pop sound on The Sky Looks Different Here. Produced by a longtime associate of the project Asher Levitas (of Planet Mu & Old Apparatus fame) and featuring a unique radioactive landscape sleeve design by Finders Keepers Andy Votel. The Sky Looks Different Here offers a map to travel through the vivid nuclear nightside world from the city to the countryside, a journey of which Paper Dollhouse's music is the soundtrack.

Setting the scene with the slowly building chord progression of 'AYVT', Astrud's vocals fall down onto Asher's emotive pads like the raindrops that fell silently outside the studio window during the albums recording sessions. This perfectly sets the scene for the journey ahead, one that traverses the fringes of the album's key influence, the post-apocalyptic 1970's opus 'Z for Zachariah' whilst taking in all manner of slow-motion dub, expansive synth-pop and time slip rave. Imagine Twin Peaks or Malá Morská Víla rescored for a W.G. Sebald book, The Sky Looks Different Here is a searching record, perfectly frozen in time, into the frost blue vinyl on which its story has been cut.

Following on from 2012's debut recordings A Box Painted Black (released via Jane Weaver's Bird imprint), a split album with Magpahi for Folklore Tapes and 2015's Aeonflower (released via Night School in conjunction with Bird) The Sky Looks Different Here is a bold move forward for the group. With the trio have crafted an album that acts as a spidery electronica soundtrack to an imagined Radio On style journey Eastward, from the Lynchian streets of Astrud's current base of North East London to Nina's countryside dwellings within the deepest realms of Suffolk

Andy Votel's recent sleeves are great.

D