Comes in a wonderful 4 pages digipak and a 12 pages booklet inside
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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album shows Saline Grace more powerful and on their highest level, performing with virtuosity, vigorous dynamics and withdrawn melancholy at the same time.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
'The Traps Of Time'
The Baltic Sea discloses
Our shadows lost in the sand
Those arduous paths to come
We’re struggling night and day
The onshore wind compels
Fallen trees, admonish silently
We’re fleeting guests on earth
Who vanish with every breath
Struggling night and day
Yesterday, each moment’s fate
I try to keep your hands in mine
Always pursued by the traps of time
Mankind climbs the highest mountain
Conquers the bottom of the sea
Like a malign growth that kills
We’re struggling night and day
A dying seabird breathes hard
Mindless compassion mortifies
Estrangement, our tragic fate
We’re man-made prisoners
Struggling night and day
Yesterday, each moment’s fate
I try to keep your hands in mine
Always pursued by the traps of time
credits
from Fog Mountain,
released January 21, 2013
Words and music written by Ricardo Hoffmann
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