Bracken
We Know About the Need

Listening to albums like this in certain moods can become an experience. It can mean getting emotional, it can mean getting attached, not being able to do without it anymore. Starting a kind of cerebral journey, an open-eyed dream that begins every time we lay the needle on it. I remain ecstatic listening to certain sounds, electronic sounds that seem to come from heaven, changing rhythm with them, leaving the society of clocks and beginning to float in this dreamlike dimension and the rest seems to matter no more. I think it’s like basking in the memory of a loved one, melancholy that envelops you and makes everything muffled, while I listen with my mouth open and stare at the void. But I am staring at the music, the colors are the music.

This is the project of Englishman Chris Adams, released last spring by Anticon. An album with an electronic imprint, rarefied electronics that contaminate pieces of folk, dismantled and reassembled ("Many Horses"). Keyboard parts that, melting into psychedelia, start to travel into the cosmos, dragging you into the cradle of sweet melodies, delicate and elusive. Clouds of color that evaporate before your eyes ("Back on the Calder Line"), leaving you before you realize what you are seeing/hearing. Music of poignant sweetness ("Heathens"), sensations that can deeply embed in the consciousness.

There is always a need for albums like this, albums that care about our feelings, albums that leverage our ability to dream, our imagination. I don’t think it’s insignificant.

"... Slowly brought back towards the tyranny of clocks, schedules, and petty rancors, I tried to talk about the journey. I must have babbled like an idiot, thoughts were racing, but the words couldn’t keep up. The guide smiled and said he understood."