48 Cameras / Scanner – We Could Bring You Silk in May (Interzone/Transcultures)

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In a time of forehead-slapping, hair-pulling, and general all-round European dazed and confusedness, a glance back just a couple of years to an harmonious, textured and nuanced mosaic of “connected sounds” assembled largely on the Internet by 48 Cameras, a fluid collective of Belgian, French, Dutch, Italian, German and British musicians who may also write, paint and make movies.

A loose affiliation of nine on this occasion, including guitarist Michel Delville, Mark Beazley (Rothko), Michael Begg (Human Greed), Nick Grey and Jean M. Mathoul, with special guests on bass clarinet, cor anglais, bansuri and much more, and featuring Scanner (who once composed an international anthem for the European Union by smooshing all the national anthems of the member states together) on “all sorts of instruments”. To top it off, Scanner´s bandmate in Githead, Malka Spigel, contributed the hazy, auburn cover art.

Intersected by two, brief interludes named after the album are three bouts of “Rainfall”, remixed versions of previously-released “Landfall“; what was then “mere” accompaniment to a poetry recitation is now a trilogy of extended, humid Indo-Arabian nightscapes. The fat, chewy bass and woodwinds, wandering guitars, and languid loops make We Could Bring You Silk in May a gentle, viscous symphony, a sweet exit from that “strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles” known as politics.

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About Author

Born and raised in Toronto, Stephen Fruitman has been living in northern Sweden lo these past thirty years. Writing and lecturing about art and culture as an historian of ideas since the early nineties, his articles have appeared in an number of international publications. He is also a contributing editor at Igloo Magazine.

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