Felicia Atkinson - O-Re-Gon

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5...according to our Ant on Fri 16 Sep, 2011.

I think the history and the circumstances behind these two recordings are very important to emphasise. Both were recorded in a single day. One in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Felicia had been recovering from Lyme disease which she caught a week before during a US coast-to-coast travelling session. The two pieces here were created in Portland Oregon and involved her playing a number of instruments she had previously never laid her hands on along with some familiar tools. The work is entirely improvised although I wouldn't have guessed it. Things do have that free feeling but there is a very clear direction steered by her gifted musicianship but beyond that there feels like something else is in control. Something deep within her soul that transcends ability as a player. I guess it's just a feeling but it's not easy to pinpoint as things feel equally troubled and dark as they do gorgeously euphoric. Things evolve at a very graceful pace and although at the core, these recordings are experimental, things feel very accurately placed and considered. Who knows, perhaps the ticks that carry the Lyme infection are channeling their energy through the artist. One symptom of Lyme disease is depression which may explain the ghosts that Felicia was seeing during the session. Her breathy longing vocals melt perfectly with the lush sounds she creates making the overall listening experience very involving and at times a little creepy in the best possible way. What a lovely and haunting disc this is. I just love the feeling emanating that supernatural forces vs biology are at work here - comes with a huge recommendation.

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O-RE-GON was recorded by Félicia Atkinson in Portland, Oregon at Adam Selzer’s Type Foundry Studio.

The album was made on one rainy day in July 2010, when Félicia had already been traveling for 2 months coast to coast in the United States. She was just recovering from a Lyme disease she caught a week before in upstate New York in the deep woods. The sound engineer Adam Selzer showed Félicia all the instruments she could use, most of them she never played before: a fender rhodes, a marimba, and a harmonium, but also some she had used before: a (this time) golden electric guitar and a piano: this is how this day of musical wonder began.Félicia didn’t have any idea what she wanted to play, she had not touched an instrument for two months and wanted the tracks to be completely improvised. So they captured one track in the morning, Grey & Green, and one track in the afternoon: Green & Grey.

The music was influenced by this special state of body and mind she was in, just in the middle of being sick and, beside this event, in the middle of a wonderful 4 month trip, and the many “ghosts” that appeared during this improvising session. The record is also a kind of elegy to some dark and beautiful destinies that ended in troubled water: Victor Hugo’s daughter Leopoldine (the lyrics of Green & Grey are a drift from one of his poems), of David Lynch’s ‘Laura Palmer’ and Robert Bresson’s ‘Mouchette’.

All music by Félicia Atkinson
Recorded and mixed by Adam Selzer at Type Foundry Studio, Portland, Oregon
Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Design by Jeremy Bible