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(2022) Beirut - Artifacts The Collected EP's, Early Works & B-Sides
Review:
Reading through Zach Condon‘s liner notes to Beirut‘s upcoming album Artifacts is quite a revelation in how it maps a musical journey. He talks of how from the age of 11 he found himself “stricken with terrible insomnia and many lonely hours to kill at night” and it was this time to fill that initially led to him recording music on “a trumpet, a drum machine, a synthesizer and my father’s acoustic guitar”. A year before Beirut released their first full-recording ‘Gulag Orkestar’ he also reveals the support he received from Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost of A Hawk and A Hacksaw who he opened for in 2005. It was bands like this that encouraged me to launch ‘The Edge’, a 24 Hour radio stream on Folk Radio UK that I ran alongside a more Trad/Contemporary folk channel. On The Edge, you could hear the Balkan brass and the eastern European folk of Beirut and A Hawk and A Hacksaw alongside the likes of folktronica offerings of Tuung, the lo-fi workouts of Jeffrey Lewis and Micah P Hinson, the psych-folk musings of Arborea and the Arizona sun-bleached sounds of Howe Gelb – not forgetting regulars such as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Alasdair Roberts, James Yorkston, Smog, My Brightest Diamond, P.G. Six, Rachael Dadd, This is the Kit and many more. The early 2000s were an interesting time for music and it felt like there was a real seismic shift going on in music at the time and I still feel the same about many of these bands today. Artifacts began humbly as a means of compiling a few early Beirut EPs for a proper physical release. However, as Condon explains in the album’s excellent liner notes reconnecting with old recordings through fresh ears turned a simple re-issue project into something much more expansive. “When the decision came to re-release this collection, I found myself digging through hard drives looking for something extra to add to the compilation. What started as a few extra unreleased tracks from my formative recording years quickly grew into an entire extra records-worth of music from my past, and a larger project of remixing and remastering everything I found for good measure.” “I had a few years where all I wanted to play was the Wurlitzer. I was particularly proud of the prepared piano and bass melody on this song, and the chorus of Conch shell parts I put together. Nick Petree holds down the percussion section beautifully, and I remember the joy of stacking dueling hand drum parts on this one with him for hours.“ He continues, “After I dropped out of high school, I began work at a local frame shop building antique gilded frames for all the galleries in town. And when I found out how the shells were used as early brass instruments, I took it to the frame shop to consider how to make it playable. In a moment of inspiration I proceeded to belt sand off the end of the shell, then drilled out the rough shape of a trumpet mouthpiece into the spiralled opening. It worked out better than I had imagined. I had used the shell for the opening piece of ‘The Flying Club Cup’ already, but decided to take it to the next level on this song, letting out every sound I could conceive of it making and stacking it up to resemble rough harmonies. I’d like to think this may be the first song to contain melodies done on both a prepared piano and a conch shell. I never knew where to place this song until now.” Fisher Island Sound: “This song was written while staying in band member Ben Lanz’s old family cottage on the coast of Connecticut, on the Fisher Island Sound. I played with the lines for years before trying to record versions of it in Brooklyn with the band. Perrin Cloutier had taught himself how to play a new button accordion beautifully, and the band was really sounding their best. I however, struggled in those years to put vocals on the songs and ended up scrapping a lot of the music from that era in this part of the collection due to fear, stress and self-doubt. I’ve come to rediscover some of these old songs in a different light since then, but they do remain a heavy reminder of unsteady times.“
Track Listing:
01 – Elephant Gun
02 – My Family’s Role In The World Revolution
03 – Scenic World
04 – The Long Island Sound
05 – Carousels
06 – Transatantique
07 – O Leãozinho
08 – Autumn Tall Tales
09 – Fyodor Dormant
10 – Poisoning Claude
11 – Bercy
12 – Your Sails
13 – Irrlichter
14 – Sicily
15 – Now I’m Gone
16 – Napoleon On The Bellerophon
17 – Interior of a Dutch House
18 – Fountains and Tramways
19 – Hot Air Balloon
20 – Fisher Island Sound
21 – So Slowly
22 – Die Treue zum Ursprung
23 – The Crossing
24 – Zagora
25 – Le Phare Du Cap Bon
26 – Babylon
Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
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