out now
http://www.firerecords.com/site/inde...id=00000000300
Various Artists - Chamber Music (James Joyce)
(2008)
5 years ago Fire Records boss James Nicholls was reading an article about Chamber Music and how James Joyce always hoped that the poems (which chart love from innocence to experience in 36 stages) would find their way to being adapted to music. The idea was simple: find contemporary artists influenced (however loosely) by Joyce's style to finally turn the poems into musical works. Our only directive was to not mess with the words!
From humble beginnings of simply asking a few friends to take part, the project soon started to reach much further than was originally intended- so much so that Billboard in the USA commented “this will either be a landmark album or a pretentious failure”
We're confident Billboard would agree it came out the latter. Featuring a real mix of contributors; Peter Buck from REM (with his 'other' band <b>Minus 5</b>), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth/<b>Text Of Light</b>), Bardo Pond, Ed Harcourt, Jessica Bailiff…the interpretations are different but are all true to the poem, resulting in a totally unique musical project with a beautifully cohesive interpretation of Joyce's poem of love.
In lovingly packaged double slipcase CD and double vinyl, its out 16th June (Bloomsday!) in UK and Europe, and 22nd July in the US. Order your advance copies and listen to samples of all the songs right here. inspired...shall surely be remembered a hundred years hence -
Culture
should be heralded as one of the great interpretative works -
PLAYLOUDER
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BBCi
A real treat for any fan of music and literature.4/5 -
GIGWISE
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The List
the wait was well worth it. -
NEW NOISE