Written by: Dave Cantrell
Redolent of dawn in all its awakening complexity – it is, in fact, nearly impossible to conceive of a richer, more subtly accurate evocation of that daily yet never unmysterious nor mundane event than what Mr. Foster offers here – we have to admit that, once your correspondent played “Alchemical Connection” (officially dropping tomorrow, July 10th) on the office stereo, one of ‘those’ hushes fell over the premises as if beauty’s immortal representative had suddenly manifested in our midst. And while we’re not, of course, privy to what the actual source of inspiration was for this mesmerizing track, we are at least aware of the composer’s ‘career arc’ (oh such a dry, inhospitable phrase) that first turned our ears Montreal-ward with Your Favorite Enemies, the lush pop band of experimentalists that ran for a decade from the aughts through the teens and could drift with an aerialist’s precision from the atmospheric to the borderline abandonment of all-out rock’n’roll, so we’re at least not exactly surprised that a track of of this caliber, drfting through one’s consciousness as it does with something of a supernal intimacy, would emanate from one of The City of a Hundred Steeples’ most preemineent composers but that doesn’t diminish in the least the quiet-if-almost-unsettling joy (the best kind, by the way) with which it holds our attention. How, exactly, Foster can manage such a sense of abundance in a form that is ostensibly minimalistic is not ours to know so instead, while mentioning in an ardent whisper that the LP from which this derives, called, appropriately, A Measure of Shapes and Sounds, arrives September 20th on Hopeful Tragedy Records, we’ll just step aside and let you bask, as we have for the last few days, in the wonder and depths of it all, in the quiet that speaks volumes of the sort that seek no attention yet cannot help but command just that. Mystery, indeed, abounds, just as we ask it to but too seldom does these days, to which we can only offer our profound gratitude. (but wait, there’s more!! This just in, a quick interview with the artist that is well well worth the read as it lends something of an innate understanding and context to the work. While always a bonus, in the case of Alex Henry Foster’s work it’s nothing less than a rare insight into a rare talent. We’ve added it below) [feature pic: Stephanie Bujold]
Stereo Embers
- You chose to record A Measure of Shape and Sounds live to capture a specific sound or feeling. What challenges and benefits did you encounter with this approach?
The benefits were numerous for me, as I’m used to constantly and compulsively deconstructing whatever I may have created over the course of a single writing session. I don’t believe in any form of absolute in life in general, and in art in particular. Therefore, such a direct approach became highly liberating for me when I decided to follow the instinctive unconsciousness necessary to turn a brief instant of organic vibration into a pure emotional uplift, when I simply allowed my doubtful self to capture the fundamental essence of a momentary let-go and enabled my inner insecurities to trust the sounds of what felt like a quiet kind of affective catharsis being designed by its abandonment. That’s why, I guess, the challenges were more about confiding my usual need for creative control to the emancipatory notion associated with the process’s intangibilities.
- You mentioned that “Alchemical Connection” was inspired by a winter dawn in the Virginian mountains. Can you share more about how that experience influenced the song’s creation or how you translated those feelings into the song?
It was a terrible period of personal turbulence. I was trying to recover from a near-fatal heart surgery while accompanying what I knew were the last moments of one of my beloved pups, MacKaye, who was reaching the end of an inspiring battle against a rare form of incurable cancer he had been diagnosed with and treated for a few months already. I was emotionally devastated and helpless. I was used to holding MacKaye in my arms to get out of bed for months already, but on that specific early day, he decided to guide me to my writing room where we used to spend almost every morning together before he got sick, for us to sit on our couch and witness one of the most incredibly beautiful sunrises I had ever seen in my life. It was a truly peaceful and deeply fulfilling moment, one that ended up being our last sunrise together. “Alchemical Connection” expresses the transcendent and timeless sensations that such an instant of pure affection has been, and will forever remain for me.
