Comes in a wonderful 4 pages digipak with a 12 pages booklet inside.
Includes unlimited streaming of Border Town Shades
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
€10EURor more
about
Saline Grace is the new project of Ricardo Hoffmann, who is known as the composer and poet of the German avant-garde band Nobility Of Salt. Supported by his long-term bass player and companion through
life, Ines Pollok, the amazing multi-instrumentalist and singer presents his first solo album, called “Border Town Shades”.
Strongly influenced by the works of Dostoevsky, Kafka and Bukowski, Ricardo Hoffmann has written claustrophobicly profound songs about desperation and the blackest depths of misery, candle-lit rooms full of tragedies, forlorn sinners and deceptive roads which are surrounded by broken telegraph poles, low-hanging wires, sadness and peculiarly grown trees, leading into nowhere and failure. He also tells us about the human’s eternal yearning for deliverance and his hope for God’s doubtful mercy, presenting now with Saline Grace a 17-track-album of incredibly emotional depth.
On “Border Town Shades” his extraordinarily filigree guitar style has been woven into antiques such as piano, organ, banjo and marimba, building up together with Ines Pollok’s powerful bass, admonishing bells and stylishly played drums a remarkable mixture of Americana, psychedelic and folklore of old Eastern Europe which creates an oppressively sinister atmosphere.
Within the centre of this soundscape, in the tradition of Nick Cave, And Also The Trees, Woven Hand or Leonard Cohen stands ominously, full of urgency and often with amazing warmth the marvellously narrative voice of Ricardo Hoffmann, who, like creeping out of the human psyche’s repressed depths, sometimes supported by means of using choirs, knows to celebrate his fateful tales and philosophic poems.
Indeed, with “Border Town Shades” Saline Grace seems to roam a sinister valley on a rain soaked, covered wagon whose wheels pass through that muddy soil, where Nick Cave once laid down
The Carny’s old nag named Sorrow.
lyrics
‘Border Town Shades’
Once more the train stopped
In the town of my irksome birth
And my contorted reflection
Was breaking away from
The silent spectacle behind
The old window’s cloudiness
Unspeakably blind eyes
Welcomed me home
With glances dedicated
To suspicious strangers
Who threatened the
Standstill
While I was crossing a ghost town
I reached the river on the edge
The stream was flowing cleaner
But dirtier in knowledge
Realizing the final decline
I remembered
Those companions
Who meant a lot to me
But who fed the unholy maw
Of jealous estrangement
The beginning rain became a flood
And a lunatic reverend screamed out of
The protestant’s house about wiping out
The evil through the hands of his Lord
I remembered the devil of my childhood
Who still was fairly alive
Revealing the old parson’s cursed lies
The murder of mine had failed twice though
In defiance of the devil’s willing hands
Those waters of the opened sky above
I reached my early childhood’s empty house
Which made me think of the woman
Who had given birth to me
Weakness had led to the betrayal of her son
And had been the devil’s strength
But through grey windows
I saw the light of my cloudy days
In the good eyes of that soul
Who had been stronger
Than her daughter
The subsiding rain washed away
The scum in the streets
But I saw a gross town dweller
Smugly swaggering along these streets
I recognized the one he never wanted to be
Walking on his circular trails
Once more the train
Would stop in the town
Of my irksome birth
Taking me away from
The river’s knowledge
credits
from Border Town Shades,
released September 1, 2007
Words and Music written by Ricardo Hoffmann
“Strangers” is packed with wonderfully menacing electro-goth—late-night horror movie music for vampire dance parties. Bandcamp New & Notable May 8, 2023
New on Grimalkin, this EP from Phantómódel is an irresistible batch of gothy post-punk that is delightfully harrowing. Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 16, 2019
Perfectly gloomy Norwegian goth/post-punk, anchored by a punchy rhythm section and driven by chiming guitar lines and morose vocals. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 16, 2021
Swirling goth-rock from the big voice behind '90s outfit Sunshine Blind, featuring a who's-who of dark underground denizens. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 31, 2020
