catalogue

NIGHTLANDS

FORGET THE MANTRA (SECRETLY CANADIAN)

NIGHTLANDS - FORGET THE MANTRA 46068
format:
1 LP
release:
12.11.2010
label:
SECRETLY CANADIAN
item ID:
46068
barcode:
0656605022918
Nightlands is the recording project of Philadelphia-based multi-instrumentalist Dave Hartley. The music he creates in his bedroom is itself a bed of delicate, chiming strings and bubbling synths beneath a blanket of choral vocal arrangements.

It's dreamy in the literal sense. "Forget the Mantra" is, in essence, a field recording of Hartley's dreams - a travel journal through pop music and a collection of psych-hymns.

The songs sound both huge and intimate, breathy and cavernous like massive echoes of a faraway concert.

Influences are The Beach Boys, The Traveling Wilburys and Hawkwind. Side A pulses with layers of tom tom drums on wide-open standout slow jam "300 Clouds" and nimbly-picked acousticmelodies on "Suzerain (A Letter to the Judge)," like Crosby, Stills & Nash gone comsic-kraut.

The songs roll and gallop then stop to breathe, always exhaling with what sounds like a thousand voices.

Through its experimental back half - reminiscent of Bowie's Low or Kate Bush's "The Ninth Wave" from Hounds of Love - full of vocal samples from Hartley's real life, the more pop-leaning front end is given greater context, like a close study of a plant's blossom before traveling down through its root architecture.

"There are degrees of warmth...and Philadelphia musician Dave Hartley's Nightlands project sounds like it was recorded in a hearth...Hartley's music seeps out and fills spaces, combining the kind of expansive resonance found in Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs with Beach Boys-like vocal arrangements..." - Pitchfork
 
  • Tracklisting
  • 1.1. FORGET THE MANTRA
  • 1.2. 300 CLOUDS
  • 1.3. SUZERAIN (A LETTER TO THE JUDGE)
  • 1.4. GOD WHAT HAVE I
  • 1.5. 'TIL I DIE
  • 1.6. GLASS VACUUM
  • 1.7. A WALK IN CHEONG, 1969
  • 1.8. WFMS, 1993
  • 1.9. LONGWAYS HOMEBOUND, 2010
  • 1.10. SLOWTRAIN
  • 1.11. FLY, NEANDERTHAL