PRICE:
$111.50
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Velvet Fog: The Studio Recordings
FORMAT
6LP/3CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
GRBOX 1026LP GRBOX 1026LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
3/19/2021

The Velvet Fog: The Studio Recordings box set contains three double-LPs plus three CDs, carefully remastered for vinyl versions of the three studio albums. Life Full of Holes (1995) and Fly High Brave Dreamers (2007) for the first time ever on vinyl, and Swinger 500 (1998) now as a double-vinyl set. All three LPs come in a gatefold sleeve and the whole set is rounded by a LP-size, 16-page brochure including tons of unreleased pictures and extensive liner-notes plus rare bonus tracks.

Chris Eckman, Ljubljana 2020: "Carla and I had played a handful of duo acoustic shows in Europe during the winter of 1993 as a way to promote the New West Motel album. On that short run of shows, we recorded the concert in Hamburg and that became the Shelter for an Evening record. I guess the idea of Chris & Carla as a studio recording entity came of out of that low-key start. Our debut studio endeavor Life Full of Holes, was never supposed to have been an album. We had originally planned to make an EP with the esteemed Seattle producer Steve Fisk known for his work with many of the bands we had come up through the clubs with . . . At the end of our Moroccan journey we stopped back in London for a one-day session with the Tindersticks. They had become friends and pretty much our favorite band ever since they had asked Carla to duet on their classic song 'Travelling Light' the year before . . . Carla had brought an unstable stomach back from North Africa and she had to stop the session a few times to wrestle with that. The condition gave her voice a dark, dusty texture. She liked the effect and, in the end, didn't want to re-sing 'Velvet Fog' and 'Take Me,' the George Jones song that she did as a duet with the band's singer Stuart Staples . . . The two subsequent Chris & Carla albums were both made in a similar sprit. They relied heavily on serendipity. Raw trust. An Eno-like faith that if you invest on the front-end in atmosphere and context and choosing the right people to work with, you will end with something intriguing. We never did rehearsals with any of the musicians that played on those records. First reactions and intuition were the governing ideas. On Swinger 500 we used drum machines and programmed beats for the first time and brought in modular synths, horns, strings and banjos to add hues and textures on top. It still one of my favorite recording projects ever . . . A decade forward and a continent away we assembled in Ljubljana to record Fly High Brave Dreamers. We cut the album in two halves. At first, we worked in a small room on a laptop -- sculpting songs more than playing them. And then we decamped to a basement studio on the edge of town, for a live-tracking sessions that included a supple Slovenian rhythm section..."