Neither/Nor Records
"There'll probably be some music, but we'll manage to find a quiet corner where we can talk."
-Erik Satie
New York City-based Dutch drummer, pianist and composer Flin van Hemmen presents an ambitious double album with his long-standing trio. This release is a followup to his 2016 debut album Drums of Days (also on Neither/Nor Records). In Casting Spells & The Coves Flin further focuses on his compositions and production. In his writing he explores haunting dark melodies and ever more mysterious forms. In the production aspects he delves deep into the minute sonic details employing a wide variety of sound processors, effects, overlaid tracks, field recordings, etc. The overall effect is a blend of "live playing" and processing/post-production where the two aspects are completely integrated and inseparable.
Casting Spells and The Coves are twin albums, each featuring eleven original compositions. Casting Spells is tracks 1-11, The Coves is tracks 12-22. Each album was conceived as a suite which strings the tracks together for two continuous 40+ minute listening sessions.
Personnel:
Todd Neufeld - acoustic guitar
Eivind Opsvik - double bass, glockenspiel
Flin van Hemmen - piano, farfisa, percussion
The Weather Meadows II features Miriam Atkin reading her poem ‘Runner’s Rear.’ Stilleven and Linedancing contain samples from recordings by Ben Gerstein.
Recorded by Joe Branciforte at Todd and Rema’s home, Brooklyn, NY on April 27, 2017. Mixed by Flin van Hemmen. Mastered by Joe Branciforte. All music by Flin van Hemmen. Casting Spells cover photo by unknown, The Coves cover photo and dogs photo by Ben Gerstein. Design by Carlo Costa.
Release date: September 27th, 2019
Press
"Really fascinating and lovely work that resides somewhere between improvisation and song forms, extremely fluid, containing much overt beauty but diverging into all sorts of unexpected byways including field recordings, gentle noise and a poem. Loved it." (Ferburay 2020)
"Independent and expressive style, astonishing experiments, evocative ideas and innovative point of view – all these elements join together the musicians." (October 26, 2019)
"Subtle voices enter, as does traffic, weather, babies, some swinging passages, birds, a museum tour, field recordings of other music, and church bells. All the sounds decay, even the live recorded passages, as if all were heard when you were just falling asleep. Better yet, just as you've awakened. Perhaps the title here should have been YEMD (Your Experience May Differ), because it certainly will." (November 19, 2020)
"This record pulls me, not away from itself, as the sound of a shock might elicit in our imagination, but away from my own nettled preoccupations in a world that encourages their overgrowth at the expense of clarity and simplicity." (January 16, 2020)
"On his ambitious new double album Casting Spells & The Coves the processes developed on his debut have been expanded and realized further, extending his initial melancholic approach into a phantasmagoria of tinted memories, melodies, and allusions which he has divided into two expressive suites of music that work as well separately as they do together. Neufeld and Opsvik again join van Flemmen in providing some of the raw materials that are sculpted into this dark and surreal vision, supplying anchor and form among drift and shapelessness, guiding the listener through flickering passages of the mirage." (December 19, 2020)
"..The first CD is titled “Casting Spells” and it is one long piece of around 43 minutes. The music is mostly acoustic and spacious, subtle and often ethereal. The minimal piano floats in and hovers in the distance. The center remains calm with a series of careful notes from the acoustic guitar, bass, piano, organ or minimal percussion, slowly interwoven, in a hushed dream-like haze. Eventually a solemn repeating phrase appears, which repeats in fragments with other minimal lines floating within. There are segments when it sounds as if the musicians are playing in another room not too far away, the ghost-like melodies somehow familiar yet obscured by a soft haze of echoes. Eventually things speed up a bit with harp-like flourishes on the guitar, somber rumbling piano and cautious plucked strings on the acoustic bass. There is a short section of a poem being read quietly near the end of the first disc which helps to bring this disc to a somber close. These discs seem to make time feel elastic as it is stretched out and things appear to slow down. Patience is required to absorb fully the nearly 90 minute journey, drifting on a raft on a tranquil ocean, rocking up and down slowly. Drifting and drifting…" (October 2020)
"De muziek van Flin van Hemmen en zijn trio valt moeilijk te omschrijven. Het is jazz, noise, gecomponeerd, geïmproviseerd, gesampled, minimal-music en nog veel meer. Rust is er altijd, in elk stuk."
"Maar Flin van Hemmen heeft ervoor gewaakt zich aan hun oeuvre vast te ketenen. Zijn blik op muziek is zeker gevoed door Amerikaanse invloeden, maar de eigenheid waarmee hij de muziek aan zijn eigen persoonlijkheid onderwerpt, zorgt voor zeldzaam luistergenot." (February 5, 2020)
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Flin van Hemmen Interviews:
Flin van Hemmen, Casting Spells & The Coves (n/n 012)
