As the year draws to a close, we picked our favourite Albums of 2023.
Tag Archives: Bex Burch
Listen to Bex Burch’s new single ‘On falling’ featuring Diego Gaeta
Photo: Fabian Brennecke
We’ve been tingling with excitement for There is only love and fear, the debut album from gifted composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker Bex Burch, which is set for release on October 20th through International Anthem. Following the elevating and delightfully enchanting ‘Don’t go back to sleep’ featuring Dan Bitney, and the stunningly deep and beautiful ‘Dawn blessings’, Burch has shared the tender and moving ‘On falling’ featuring Diego Gaeta on piano. She comments:
“On falling was a phrase from a friend Emilyn Claid, and this came to me in a moment in Scottie and Chess’s home in LA, a real domestic moment: They had given me a bird bath to hold water so I could play a water drum as part of my setup. While we were playing that day, the bath started leaking, and I turned the microphone down to focus where my ears were focused: the water drops. I love how sounds and rhythm and noises can affect music, I feel like we continuously interact even if it’s unconscious – our unknown participation in my duet with the water drops.”
Gaeta also had this say about it:
“On Falling is a recording that arrived in the moment, drenched in sunlight, at a point where the peaceful entities within the group improv fell into place such that a special jazzy lullaby was created. Listening back, after it was created, the three of us: Ben, Bex and myself felt such a giddy, safe, warm feeling similar to that of a tender moment at a house party of deep communal acceptance and love felt in a close conversation. A feeling that I think was heightened due to the studio setting of the day being Scottie’s lovely living room.”
Along with the single, International Anthem has also unveiled today a new mini documentary about Bex Burch and the making of the album. Listen to ‘On falling’ below and check out the mini doc straight after.
Bex Burch releases video for second single ‘Don’t go back to sleep’
Photo: Fabian Brennecke
A central figure of the contemporary UK scene, and a longtime favourite here at CTD, Bex Burch is gearing to release There is only love and fear. Marking the first album under her own name, it saw the gifted composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker compose and record it in various spaces in the US with an astonishing cast of musicians including Ben LaMar Gay, Macie Stewart, Anna Butterss, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Dan Bitney of Tortoise.
Burch enticed us back in July with the stunningly deep and beautiful ‘Dawn blessings’ and now she is sharing a second track from the album called ‘Don’t go back to sleep’, co-composed by and featuring Dan Bitney (synthesizer). Prompted by the rhythms and melodies of birdsong, ‘Don’t go back to sleep’ is an elevating and delightfully enchanting song full of wonder. Speaking about the single, Burch comments:
“‘Don’t go back to sleep’ is simply polymetric exploration of time. With Dan Bitney in the room, I’m falling, phasing, almost. Pushing the boundaries of time. If the beat is a tiny moment within the vastness of space around it, then playing with that space and where to place the note is my joy.”
Dan Bitney had also this to say about it:
“I had a wonderful time meeting Bex. We got coffee first, then we hit the studio. Ben showed up a little later. We were really getting into a groove together, it felt natural trying different ideas, we were meshing. Then a tornado rolled through Chicago, the sirens went off and we stopped and looked at the sky. Soon we returned to the studio and made more music. We eased the atmospheric pressure and cleared the skies. This session was joyful and I’m super happy to have been part of it.”
Burch has made a video to accompany the track, and commenting on it she said:
“Filmed from the back of a boat or from inside the water at various lakes around Berlin, Gransee, Teglersee, bit further North in Usedom and further south on the coast of Portugal. Water, waves, the rhythm of wave, the energy and shapes of waves are massively important to me. I learnt more about this album swimming in the lake than in the studio.
This video, for ‘Don’t go back to sleep,’ also features the elemental sun, setting along those waves on one horizon, which seems to try to move in and out of sync with the other horizon of swans taking off, even with moments where the swans and the sunlight merge together into shapes of light. Which echoes mine and Danny’s sound waves moving in and out of sync and towards and away, becoming each other and separating: the combination of those waves affecting each other is what you hear.”
Now watch the video below.
There is only love and fear is set for release on October 20th through International Anthem.
Bex Burch signs to International Anthem for new album There is only love and fear
Photo: Chris Almeida
There’s wonderful news from Bex Burch, who turned our heads back in 2015 with the outstanding debut album from her band Vula Viel. The gifted composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker went on to work and collaborate with various artists and projects, becoming a central figure of the contemporary UK scene. She has announced the release of There is only love and fear, the first album to be penned under her own name. The album was prompted by an invitation from Chicago-based IARC for her to spend a month in the US last summer. Armed with her hand-made xylophone, Burch got involved with the label’s creative community and transposed the energy of the collaborations and environments she found herself in into what became There is only love and fear. The sessions for upcoming album took place in various spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago and a canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, with an astonishing cast of musicians including Ben LaMar Gay, Macie Stewart, Anna Butterss, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Dan Bitney of Tortoise.
There is only love and fear is set for release on October 20th through International Anthem. Alongside the announcement today, the album’s first single, the stunningly deep and beautiful ‘Dawn blessings’, is now streaming. Burch’s recording of a cuckoo on the Baltic coastline sparked the track’s inception as she explains:
“Dawn blessings were the start of all of this. I started a 90-day practice to make a tune a day for my friend Dawn. My only job was to breathe, let go, and ask “what sounds do I like today?”. One of these days I heard a Cuckoo at dawn, this moment of listening opened up my identity from musician to listener.”
‘Dawn blessings’ comes with a gorgeous accompanying video directed by Louise Boer, who had this to say about it:
“The music video for ‘dawn blessings’ is a meditation on the joy and subtle magic that can be found during a slow and solitary walk through landscapes of sand, stones and pine trees; sometimes wild, sometimes heavily damaged and disturbed, but always full of life. It’s a hypnotic exploration of human and more-than-human entanglements in which the body dissolves into the environment and the invisible slowly becomes visible. Filmed during walks in Beerze (NL), Kennemerduinen (NL), Gaujas Ieteka Jūrā (LV).”
Watch the video below.
To tide you over until the album’s release, check out the excellent guest mixtape Bex Burch put together for us back in May 2018.
