Severin the Wanderer:
"To call this eerily gorgeous album, I Swear By All The Flowers, “ambient” is to be lazy, or obtuse. Too much in the experience of this work demands attention for mere “ambience.” It is instrumental, yes --..."
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Severin the Wanderer:
"To call this eerily gorgeous album, I Swear By All The Flowers, “ambient” is to be lazy, or obtuse. Too much in the experience of this work demands attention for mere “ambience.” It is instrumental, yes --except for the voices of the dead murmuring in the background on some cuts-- but the only actual instrument that I can make out is a skeletal piano laced through the dull huffing of steam and the crackle of scratched vinyl. When I listen, my brain is filled with vivid notions, fired by suggestions, chilled by nameless dread. If this is in fact music, it is the music of the inner mind, that which sees without looking when we daydream. This particular song feels like a memory of something I know I’ve never experienced: dozing as an ancient train clatters through a region of eastern Europe or the American Rustbelt where the young people have all fled and the sole remaining inhabitants, too old or infirm to follow their offspring, watch our passage from dilapidated porches behind unmown fields in a sepia light of failing day. The rhythm is a sine-wave supplied by the rails themselves, and as such appeals to our nostalgia for our lost days, never to be found. I’m reminded of a magnificent small story by Hawthorne, “The Haunted Mind,” a depiction of those first moments between sleep and waking in the dark, when life shares the possibilities of dream. This record does that. If you are like me, it will possess you and question you. It will force you to remember someone else’s life. It will pierce you to the heart."
