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Centres

by Ian William Craig

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josh epps
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josh epps This album is an immersive experience. The blending of tape decay, oceanic drones, and vocal melodies puts me in a headspace like none other. It all strikes a perfect balance between mournful and hopeful. Favorite track: A Circle Without Having To Curve.
azzabaijan
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azzabaijan This album is just mesmerizing, from beginning to end. Favorite track: Arrive, Arrive.
Pluto Bailey
Pluto Bailey thumbnail
Pluto Bailey I really like this album a lot. It is deep and rich. Moreover it is extremely creative. I ordinarily do not enjoy technical vocals however there is something different going on here all together. This is something equally passionate, raw, and vulnerable. Favorite track: Contain (Astoria Version).
alwbsok
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alwbsok Full of beautiful and bleak soundscapes. At over 71 minutes, it's a meaty album, but well worth a listen in full. Headphones are a must! Favorite track: A Single Hope.
Tim Clarke
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Tim Clarke This album is absolutely stunning – and probably my favourite of IWC's releases to date. Highly recommended for fans of Fennesz, Tim Hecker and Markus Mehr, but with its own celestial cadence. Favorite track: Contain (Astoria Version).
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The Nearness 07:45
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Set To Lapse 02:47
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Innermost 03:28
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about

‘Centres’ is the stunning new album from Vancouver-based vocalist / composer Ian William Craig, and his first release for FatCat (Max Richter, Hauschka, Dustin O’Halloran, Jóhann Jóhannsson, etc) following two critically lauded back to back albums for Recital Program. Ian William Craig is a trained operatic vocalist who combines his voice with analogue synthesizers, reel-to-reel machines, and faulty tape decks to create sublime cascades of unpredictable decay and beauty. Though classically trained and grounded in the choral tradition, Craig’s early albums were centered significantly around the piano, with his voice merely a marginal presence. But in recent years his practice has come to focus increasingly around his powerful voice, as can be witnessed on ‘Centres’.

Fundamentally distressed yet texturally lush, ‘Centres’ is an immensely deep, rich and rewarding listen. It was recorded in an assortment of studio and other locations across his Vancouver hometown: in concert halls and classrooms; train-yards and live rooms, as well as Craig’s own home. It was created using a mixture of sources - synthesizer, Hammond organ, guitar, accordion, wire recorder, loop station, Craig’s array of re-purposed tape decks and “cassette choir”. The songs were created manipulating tape loops through two or three decks at once to create strange deteriorating delays with different colors. Craig would then circuit-bend the bias to create odd kinds of distortion, or bend the sound back into itself so it feeds back in unpredictable ways.

Continually honing and pushing this process, the album shows a quite brilliant attention to textural detail. Morphing, swirling, scouring, shimmering, it continually expands and contracts around you. Forging a harmonically gorgeous and utterly immersive listening experience, it pulls you from the rousing, slow-build of the opening ‘Contain (Astoria Version)’ through the standout ‘A Single Hope’, with its huge bass and Hammond organ swells, and through shifting cloud-zones of ‘Drifting to Void on All Sides’ or ‘Power Colour Spirit Animal’, the Nico-esque accordion opening of ‘The Nearness’, and back to the cyclical ending of ‘Contain (Cedar Version)’, one of the cleanest and sparest tracks here - pared back to the purity of a single voice and guitar.

‘Centres” is a stunning album that stands with a similarly unique sense of vision and integrity as the likes of William Basinski or Colin Stetson.

credits

released July 8, 2016

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Ian William Craig Vancouver

graphic delicate,urgent/full of space,musicmoves shifting tectonic plates of vocalpianotape improvisations –. fields of oldest hiss,haunting: melodies, collapsing answersbillowing clouds of erasure/rebuilding.

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