Comes in a wonderful 4 pages digipak and a 12 pages booklet inside
Includes unlimited streaming of Fog Mountain
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about
After a moment’s silence, Saline Grace are back with their latest album ‘Fog Mountain’ and an official video.
During his parental leave, mastermind Ricardo Hoffmann made time for a short guest appearance, joining Hamburg-based band Dark Orange on their latest 2CD album ‘Horizont’. Along with Steven Burrows, a member of English cult band And Also The Trees, on bass, Ricardo Hoffmann contributed on additional guitars and piano. He furthermore created a remix for ‘Interpretations’, the second CD of the same release; other remixes were made by artists like Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins, members of And Also The Trees and many more.
With ‘Fog Mountain’, however, Saline Grace continue on their very own paths, setting great store by the use of almost exclusively acoustic instruments that seem to hail from an antique musical instruments shop. The extraordinarily filigree guitar style with its wistful slide techniques, mandolin-like ornaments and fingerstyle parts is recognisably Ricardo Hoffmann’s, who knows to create pictorial synaesthesias, raising nightly panoramas from imaginatively enraptured roadmovies.
Subtly woven into a dusty sound stage, mainly consisting of piano, organ, concertina, banjo, violin, accentuated drums, not uncommonly played with brushes, as well as Ines Hoffmann’s deeply resonating bass, the listener is inevitably getting entangled in a mystic and sinister atmosphere, drawing marvellously attention to singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ricardo Hoffmann’s emotional baritone.
Among personal contents, his protagonists act full of symbolism in front of surreal, near-natural sceneries and re-flect frequently anthropological backgrounds, dealing with mankind’s estrangement from nature and within their artificial environment, their culture, too.
Their new album shows Saline Grace more powerful and on their highest level, performing with virtuosity, vigorous dynamics and withdrawn melancholy at the same time.
Indeed, ‘Fog Mountain’ impresses with diversity of its arrangements, variety of vocals and its uniquely captured atmosphere, captivating the listener not only by catchy melodies, but also by Ricardo Hoffmann’s distinctive voice, who conveys deep melancholy coupled with hidden rage, solitude and, in very few instances, hope as well.
For fans of And Also The Trees, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, The Doors and Wovenhand
lyrics
‘Blackbird’
I’m a blackbird of broken wings
A silent death between the rails
An unseen pain on mother earth
For a raging beast has ominously come
Closing my beak and stealing my song
Yes, a steam engine with boxcars and
That blinded mankind in their cages
Having my bloody feathers and my feet
On these awfully iron wheels
Once I was a blackbird of fluttering wings
Carrying a holy message in my beak
And all impatient wisdoms in a song
For my breath had been given graciously
Taking me down from my southern hills
Yes, along the sickness of a muddy river
Until I reached the realms of the human plan
Singing from those trees of whisper to
All the people from Stranger’s Town
Now I’m a blackbird of dead wings
A mournful plumage, soaked by rain
And the unheard wisdom of a song
For my heart has been taken without concerns
Sowing blind creatures and reaping their shades
Yes, a scythe wielded by fateful delusion
Blows the poisoned harvest into the land
Bringing a last and lethal message
To all blackbirds of fluttering wings
credits
from Fog Mountain,
released January 21, 2013
Words and music written by Ricardo Hoffmann
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