The Dengie Hundred With Gemma Blackshaw
Who Will You Love

THE REVIEW

Another masterpiece 2024…

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Gemma Blackshaw is an art historian, Owen Lawrence, alias Dengie Hundred, is instead a gentle alchemist.

They met in 2023 when Owen was recording “Lammas Land”, a matter between field recording, ambient, and electronics.

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“Lammas Land”

Walking through low, aquatic lands, changeable like our soul. Observing the marshes from a window/world while the sound follows the reverie like a faithful dog.

Smoke rising from the boats, battles between crows and seagulls, the arrival of bats as the night fades,

Trains, fishermen, passersby, provisions, water spirits.

A world apart, a middle land, “a sharp pause of green and sky” described by an essential and dreamy guitar and a mix of minimal happenings.

With Gemma, for now, limiting herself to writing a text that will accompany the record...

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In “Who Will You Love” Gemma takes more space and, even though she is not a musician nor a singer, she records on her smartphone words that speak of the need for love. Hers is a voice that seems a kind of dream and appears to come from the bottom of the bottom of the human heart. “Lullabies, protection spells for children and lovers, requests like play with me, carry me.” Owen has nothing left to do but pour into the pot one of his sorcerer-alchemist elixirs.

...

Writing about certain albums is like trying to catch clouds or connect the dots of the stars with a pencil.

No use in wracking your brains to find the words, better that the words find you.

So imagine you are at the bar on a Sunday morning, the usual coffee, the usual chocolate pastry, and suddenly, idly flipping through a newspaper, you stumble upon a phrase like this: “The darkness is not black, but a strange and impalpable luminescence”…

Well, those words perfectly describe the album you've been listening to for days and are roughly the little voice that whispers “we're here”.

And the message is, in essence, that within the folds of the night, there's virtually nothing that doesn't glow

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I imagine the children are asleep and the curtain is about to open. A matter of portals, passages, intermissions...

Then there's the fresh air when you open the window, the slightly chilly air accompanying the ghosts, the warmth of emotions, a vague and sweet taste of magic.

Those who understand talk about slowcore calls, folk amidst the clouds, dub somehow drifted among the stardust.

I would add the Bristol sound listened to at the lowest perceptual threshold not to disturb the neighbors and also a half Twin Peaks half dollhouse feeling.

A collection of poignant humanity between nostalgia, restlessness, melancholy, invocation, desire. An I you we all and a sweet shiver that means nothing else but perhaps we are still alive...

Trallallà...