“Operating under a variety of guises, including Heidika, Carousell, Harlassen and Clouwbeck, Richard Skelton, on Tompkins Square, creates powerful, instrumental music out of densely-layered acoustic guitar, bowed strings, piano, mandolin and accordion, often laced with delicate, shimmering percussion. The result is something utterly unique – a music which is both life-affirming and yet etched with memory and loss, evoking equal parts Arvo Pärt and Ry Cooder, Nick Drake and Henryk Górecki.
It is with A Broken Consort, perhaps, that Skelton most-assuredly draws these elements together, creating an ever-changing drift of rich textures and interleaved melody that effortlessly evokes the landscapes which inspired it. Box Of Birch, his second album in this guise, was originally published in a boxed edition that contained, among other things, birch twigs collected from the West Pennine Moors. For Skelton these things act as a synecdoche for the landscape itself, a physical connection to the places in which much of his music is recorded. In this new edition for Tompkins Square, Skelton has created an exclusive series of artworks which draw on the hidden histories of the English landscape, and their narratives of displacement and loss. The result is something which perfectly complements the music whilst adding another dimension, providing a fuller picture of the artist’s vision.”
A Broken Consort – Box Of Birch from Tompkins Square on Vimeo.
Artist: A Broken Consort
Title: Box of Birch
Label: Tompkins Square
Genre: Folk : Avantgarde/Experimental
Release Date: 4/28/09
UPC: 894807002134
Territory: World
