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LP
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WSR 072LP
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With 2022's critically acclaimed album Ghosts (WSR 016B-LP), enigmatic Shropshire group Haress marked out their own place in a growing landscape of artists navigating the world of the traditional and the rural in new ways. Ghosts led to the normally reclusive Haress venturing out from their base in the Shropshire Hills for live performances with the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Shovel Dance Collective, Big Brave, Steve Von Till and appearances at Supersonic and Krankenhaus Festivals -- not to mention making fans of everyone from Kevin Martin to James Holden in the process. Skylarks is perhaps the natural conclusion of these past few years for the group. Whereas previous Haress recordings have embraced something of the unknown in the process of their making, Skylarks sees a well-travelled group of musicians carefully craft long and expressive pieces of music in a powerful and instinctual way. The music here might be long, but it never sprawls out of control. The telepathy present in live performance has been harnessed and used to carefully compose and arrange these four pieces, narrating a journey through landscape and time that is as powerful as it is beautiful. Inspired by found folk songs, the power of nature and the power of community and Ben Myers' brutal tale of resistance, Haress have created a genuinely epic soundtrack to a world both past and future, real and imagined. The ambience and atmosphere of the recording (expertly captured by Phil Booth of JT Soar Studio on location in the group's hometown of Bishop's Castle) is entirely natural, the sound of an ensemble playing live in the room around you. The only vocal interjection this time comes from a choir of voices, replicating the communal singing that has been the centerpiece of Haress live performances. When the voices emerge, it feels truly euphoric and heavy. Not heavy as in metal, but heavy as in the Earth itself -- a primal, joyful gut punch to the system.
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LP
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WSR 016B-LP
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Black vinyl re-press. Originally released in 2022, Ghosts met with deserved critical acclaim, being included in many album-of-the year lists and seeing Haress leave their base in the Shropshire hills to play festivals such as Supersonic, Krankenhaus and Boundaries and share stages with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Shovel Dance Collective, Big Brave, and Steve Von Till among others. Recorded in a disused water mill over a week in North Wales, Ghosts feels like the perfect blend of free-wheeling accident and careful orchestration, both site-specific and uncanny in its evocation of place and time. Circumstance and environment shape the music -- rough drones and found sounds naturally link together beautiful guitar-and-drum pieces, as vocals and trumpet float in and out like the specters the album title suggests. Ghosts feels delightfully unpredictable but complete and singular, inviting repeated listens and an emotional connection like few others. FFO: Lungfish, Tinariwen, Earth, Fairport Convention, Talk Talk.
"This blissed-out psychedelia is not quite pastoral -- there's nothing twee about these unwinding grooves -- yet evokes water and wood, light and shadow, a place of forgotten labor and the absent human form with a beguiling grace." --The Quietus
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