Label: A Colourful Storm

大大大推薦！！Feeding Tube Recordsからの諸作、スウェーデンI Dischi Del Baroneからの7インチ作で注目されていたニュージーランドの女性シンガーソングライターMaxine Funkeの2021年ソロアルバム!!愛や喪失、喜び、不安という自身の深い内面を表現した非常に繊細なアルバムであり、徹底的に削ぎ落とした演奏と共に自身の声そのものが独自のサウンドを奏でる楽器として機能した凄まじい音楽性。少しローファイ気味に仕上げた全体像も美しい幽玄なイメージの連続。Loren Connorsとの共演で知られるKath BloomやVashti Bunyanのファン等あらゆる方に届く超傑作。

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A Colourful Storm presents Seance, a new set of songs by Maxine Funke.

Following a productive recording period beginning with Silk (2018) and ending with Forest Photographer (2020), Seance marks a remarkable levitation of Funke’s tender, softly spoken songcraft first documented on Lace (2008) and Felt (2012) into new creative heights. Folksong confessionals with the burden of memory. Ghostly confines, murmurs from the cracks. Soil, blood and skin. The beauty and mundanity of the everyday.

The voice of Funke is a distinctive instrument, one which perfectly elucidates her sometimes confessional, at other times deeply inward allusions to love, loss, joy and disquiet. Lyrics grounded in observation and adventure (“Eyeballs, asphalt, grass clippings, peppercorns”) unravel into uneasy truths daubed in self-consciousness and forbidden desire (“I’m not shy / There's just a sparkle in your eye and I don't feel right”). The simplest things can be the most difficult to express.

Opener ’Fairy Baby’ and ‘Homage’ are sensuous and probing, celebrating new beginnings while cautiously closing old chapters. ‘Quiet Shore’, a seven-minute reverie of guitar strum and poetry, conjures spirits long forgotten and shines as Funke’s first solo foray into longform songwriting. A perfect accompaniment to the album’s centrepiece, ‘Lucky Penny’, a euphoric, entrancing rush foreshadowing the delicate dreamspeak still to come.

An assertive, visionary recording by one of New Zealand’s most extraordinary voices, Seance is a lover’s lament, a revealing of self and a secluded wander through fields of enchantment.