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Cindytalk - Hold Everything Dear

Recommended by us on 29th July 2011

Hold Everything Dear by Cindytalk

5...according to our on Fri 29 Jul, 2011.

Naming his new album after a popular book by contemporary American philosopher & artist John Berger, the chameleonic Gordon Sharp continues in his 30+ year quest to uncover new sonic territory. Once affiliated with the 4AD and Cocteau Twins/This Mortal Coil community, his material in more recent days, over a trilogy of fine albums including this, skirts around the areas of dark ambient, sound-art, field recordings, drone & lovely minimal classical arrangements. His is a wondrous, spiritual, eerie and sometimes industrial sound that glistens, thunders and pulsates with enigmatic possibilities. From opener 'How Soon Now...' your sound-world is his absorbing vision that wanders from fuzzy, clanking dystopia, organic scrunch & cavernous ambient-noir to the reflective piano-laden vignettes he perforates the overall mood with. Out of the many artists practising in this field today, Cindytalk's output is amongst the most expressive & fascinating out there. This sonic hinterland between absorbing dream-scapes & the creeping dread of an extra-terrestrial nightmare supplies you with some really imaginative scenarios to grapple with. It's a rich, ever-evolving sound leaping from the modern stable of effortless class that is Peter Rehberg's Editions Mego.

All tracks written and recorded by Gordon Sharp and Matt Kinnison between 2006–2011 at Roi Vert, Okamoto (Japan), 13th Floor and Space Eko (London), Southend (Essex)

Mastered at Piethopraxis, June 2011
Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, June 2011

Design/images: David Coppenhall
Assembled at Sixism (Maggi Smith/David Coppenhall)

For Matt Kinnison and John Berger

Hold Everything Dear is the third instalment in the new Cindytalk sound which started with 2007’s The Crackle Of My Soul, and then last years Up Here in The Clouds. Its the first in the trilogy to feature musicians other than Gordon Sharp namely the late Matt Kinnison, to whom the album is dedicated.

Inspired by the John Berger book of the same name, this latest release is whole new set of parameters which push the sound on the previous two works to an extreme point of abstraction, and in some places near silent passages and haunted melodic segments. And what a mysterious journey this ends up being with increased use of piano and found/field recordings giving all the tracks a blurry soundtrack appeal to the point where the definitions between the tracks are no longer clearly defined. It harks back to the odder parts of In This World and The Wind Is Strong albums from the early 1990s.

Superbly packaged with new David Coppenhall artwork in a 4-panel digipack and gatefold vinyl sleeve.

Tracklisting:

1. How Soon Now
2. On The Tip Of My Tongue
3. In Dust To Delight
4. Fly Away Over Here
5. Waking In The Snow
6. From Rokko-San
7. Hanging In The Air
8. Fallen Obi
9. Those That Tremble As If They Were Mad
10. Floating Clouds
11. I See You Uncovered
12. ...Until We Disappear

Spaewaif said:

John Berger,born in *LONDON*,is an English art critic,writer and thinker! He also paints and writes novels and is currently living in France. I don't think he has much affinity to anything American... ;-/

Buddingloaf said:

John Berger is an English marxist art historian/writer who lives in France.He ain't no American... nice review though.

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