We’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of First Sounds, the debut collaborative album that pairs three of Montreal’s finest musicians, composer and violinist Sarah Neufeld, multi-instrumentalist and musical polymath Richard Reed Parry and cellist and composer Rebecca Foon. The album will see the light of day on November 1st through Envision Records in North America and One Little Independent in the UK and the rest of the world, and the trio had already shared the utterly engrossing and otherworldly ‘Maria’ and ‘Slow New Year’, the spellbinding piece that sprouted the album. They are enticing us again with new single ‘Circular’, a track about “plaintive ghosts”, as Neufeld describes. She continues, “Three rivers of subconscious thought weaving through one another, picking up and leaving off, through a dense fog and the long reeds. We search for hidden answers in the muck and the morning air. Bows gently scrape strings, round and round and round”.
‘Circular’ is offered with a video made by Jason Last and you can watch it now.
Last month we were excited to hear about First Sounds, the upcoming collaborative album from three of Montreal’s finest musicians – composer and violinist Sarah Neufeld, multi-instrumentalist and musical polymath Richard Reed Parry and cellist and composer Rebecca Foon. Following the utterly engrossing, otherworldly and beautiful first single, ‘Maria’, the trio have now unveiled ‘Slow New Year’, the spellbinding piece that sprouted the album. The single is offered with accompanying visuals and you can watch it below.
There’s wonderful news from three of Montreal’s finest musicians – boundlessly inventive composer and violinist Sarah Neufeld, incredible multi-instrumentalist and musical polymath Richard Reed Parry and enchanting and brilliant cellist and composer Rebecca Foon -, who have teamed up for a collaborative album. Longtime favourites here at CTD, the pairing of these three artists is a match made in heaven. Neufeld, Parry and Foon first met in Montreal in the late 90’s and played together then in various outfits as they found their way into the local artistic scene. They have today announced the release of their debut album, First Sounds, slated for a November 1st release through Envision Records in North America and One Little Independent in the UK and the rest of the world. Featuring nine compositions, “with dynamic minimalism, sweeping crescendos and rich harmonies”, as the press release describes, they delved deep into the cinematic realm, exploring and drawing from classical and orchestral influences.
Parry shared some insight into their collaboration:
“In Montreal, October 1999, the three of us played music with each other for the first time. As we began to improvise together, we felt a shared, wordless musical language emerge right away, somehow intuitive and familiar from the very start.
We experimented and played together often at that time – Montreal was and still is a very creative and multi-faceted artistic hive of activity. The musical chemistry we found together was formative in each of the bands we went on to form and musical collaborations we pursued, but we never made a recording of our original trio and its unique, intimate and explorative sound.
Decades of friendship and many bands later, in the heart of the first pandemic winter the three of us got together in a room and made our first album as an ensemble. Picking up exactly where we left off years earlier, we began fashioning compositions that immediately tapped into the same musical language we had discovered between us so many years earlier.”
Alongside the album news, the trio unveiled the first single, ‘Maria’, an utterly engrossing, otherworldly and beautiful track featuring Shahzad Ismaily on percussion. Of the track, Parry said:
“The melody was inspired by an old handmade recording on reel-to-reel tape that came with a tape recorder I bought, it had very slowed down/half speed voices singing hymns on it, but the recording was so slow and distorted you couldn’t really tell what they were singing. So, the tune sort of felt like a hymn-like invocation.”
‘Maria’ comes with an accompanying video directed by Jason Last, who had this to say about it:
“Recording and observing nature in Catalonia, Spain, I wanted to capture the cyclical and intricate nature of the sound through elements of light, touch, and the movement of my own body as I shot for each 5-minute take. Connecting my body and the subjects that I shot.”
With only a month to go until Detritus lands in all its resplendent glory, Sarah Neufeld has shared a third staggering single from her upcoming album called ‘The Top’. The marvellous composer and violinist had already enticed us with the poignant and beautiful lead single ‘Stories’, followed by the enchanting and bewildering ‘With Love and Blindness’. Save for a few ethereal vocal parts at the end of the track, ‘The Top’ is the only solo violin composition on Detritus, and as she puts it, “it’s a fast, furious, trance like piece to play live.” The single comes paired with a striking video directed by Kaveh Nabatian. Here it is.
After enticing us with the poignant and beautiful lead single ‘Stories’, boundlessly inventive composer and violinist Sarah Neufeld has shared a brand new single, ‘With Love and Blindness’, taken from her upcoming third album, Detritus. Like the album, stemming from a collaboration with dancer/choreographer Peggy Baker, ‘With Love and Blindness’ was originally written for Baker’s choreography and performed live onstage by Neufeld and her Arcade Fire bandmate Jeremy Gara, along with “four women moving in meditative harmony, as if in secret communication”, as she explained. Neufeld re-worked and arranged the piece to what would become the album version with the addition of vocals. “The vocals on this track, and on other tracks on the album”, describes Neufeld, “are moments of catharsis, sweetness rising above pain, pushing forward into a sense of mystery.”
‘With Love and Blindness’ is offered with a video made by longtime collaborator Jason Last. Speaking about it, he commented:
“My ongoing creative collaboration with Sarah has always been an instinctive process. Because we know each other so well, and have worked together for so long, there is a lot of knowledge and trust that goes into the inspiration.
For With Love & Blindness we decided to shoot our experience in Corsica in June of 2019, where Sarah had been invited for a mini residency and to perform live. The video is an exploration of our time there, surrounded by the rugged nature of this Mediterranean island that lends so well to the energy behind her music.
Somewhere between documentation and fantasy, we captured Sarah in these environments, which later came together to visualize this powerful song from her new record.”
Detritus will land in all its resplendent glory on May 14th through Paper Bag Records in North America and One Little Independent Records in the rest of the world. Now wrap your ears around the enchanting and bewildering ‘With Love and Blindness’.
Sarah Neufeld has been a favourite of ours for a long time, first conquering our ears with her 2013 beguiling debut album Hero Brother. With two magnificent solo albums under her belt, and a staggering collaborative album with Colin Stetson, the extraordinary composer and violinist is ready to dazzle us again with her eagerly anticipated third full-length album arriving this May. Entitled Detritus, the album stems from a collaboration initiated in 2015 with dancer/choreographer Peggy Baker. The partnership carried on and saw Neufeld performing and composing to Baker’s choreography, and heading on tour in February 2019. Neufeld felt like this live performance music could take another form, “as a distilled set of songs, refined and developed beyond the versions performed on stage”, as the press release explains, and started working on arranging the material that summer. To help her bring the album to life, she invited her Arcade Fire bandmate Jeremy Gara, Bell Orchestre bandmate Pietro Amato and Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Stuart Bogie. Neufeld commented on the tracks that make up Detritus:
“I was inspired by both a sense of interior aloneness, and a sense of deep intimacy. Within both, a profound questioning of identity and intention, and ultimately, a grieving over one’s former sense of self. The stories we’ve told ourselves that we can no longer believe. Nestled within deep layers of comfort, familiarity, and solace, I’m able to repeat myself again and again, never learning, never looking back. Simultaneously becoming wiser and more ignorant as the years wind on, beauty and grace exist even here, in this rift.”
Detritus will see the light of day on May 14th through Paper Bag Records in North America and One Little Independent Records in the rest of the world and ahead of it Neufeld has shared the poignant and beautiful opening track, ‘Stories’. The single comes with a visual accompaniment made by Jeremy Mimnagh.
