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
‘Mercy And Deliverance’
Within those realms of community
The days rage like the tearing claws
Of the beast of prey
But in gnawing nights searching for peace
The sufferer’s stolen soul fails inside
The beast’s hurtful paunch
And its acid laughter
Far from here within the storm’s raging
The fleeting years swirl like leaves
In those ruins of a human soul
But reaching for those years
The seeker drowns in
A surging ocean of
Fading memories
The weak senses change illusions
Into glimmers of hope
A suspected deeper truth
The observer cannot realize
For he plunges into passion and faith
As a way of passing the time
The exhausted death itself miserably fails
Giving no certainty of
Mercy and deliverance
And behind an intangible horizon
The swaying comedian squeals
And laughs scornfully
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
