‘A FEW SCATTERED HOURS’ TRACKLISTING :
1. Exit Wounds
2. The Same Indifference
3. This Never Happened
4. That’s Telling
5. The Right To Be Forgotten
6. Trace Elements Of Humility
7. Early Summer Separation
8. Days I’m Happy To Forget
9. Dead To Me Now
10. I Guess You’ll Never Know
11. A Few Scattered Hours
BONUS DISC, ‘REMIXES & REWORKS’ TRACKLISTING :
1. Exit Wounds (Giulio Aldinucci remix)
2. The Same Indifference (Brendan Perry remix)
3. A Few Scattered Hours (The Green Kingdom remix)
4. The Right To Be Forgotten (Insides remix)
5. Dead To Me Now (Pin/Johnson remix)
6. I Guess You’ll Never Know (Mücha remix)
7. Early Summer Separation (with Yvonne Bruner)
8. Days I’m Happy To Forget (with Yvonne Bruner)
Anglo/American/Australian collective Memory Drawings unknowingly began work on its fourth album, A Few Scattered Hours, during its spring 2018 tour of the UK and Spain, even if a majority of the tracks weren’t written until Joel Hanson returned to the US with a hammered dulcimer that he had left under bandmate (former Hood founder) Richard Adams’ guest room bed for the previous decade.
Nevertheless, the concept of the record began to take shape long before these 11 tracks were finished. Due to time constraints and the vast geographical distance between band members, Memory Drawings has always written music in short bursts of creativity, whenever a few scattered hours were available for Joel and Richard to make music in the same room together. However, the record title is also an indirect indictment of life in early 21st-century, neo-liberal America, where increasing numbers of people are consumed by the relentless necessity of fulfilling economic imperatives, leaving fewer and fewer hours to focus on the spiritual/artistic pursuits that make life worth living. A Few Scattered Hours is the band’s sonic antidote to this loss of personal autonomy, a reminder that other worlds—more compassionate and beautiful—are still possible.
In addition to Memory Drawings mainstays Richard Adams (Hood/The Declining Winter/Western Edges), Sarah Kemp (Brave Timbers), and Gareth S Brown (Hood), Joel reached out to a larger group of musicians, mostly old friends and former bandmates from his hometown of Minneapolis – Joel Smith, Tim Ritter, Craig Grossman and Mykl Westbrooks – in addition to cellist Peter Hollo (Tangents/FourPlay String Quartet) and viola-player Jessy Greene to help shape the record in their own unique ways. The result is the band’s most dense, song-oriented and percussion-heavy record to date.
Like Memory Drawings’ previous releases, ‘A Few Scattered Hours’ includes a bonus eight-track bonus disc of remixes and vocal versions, ‘Remixes & Reworks,’ which serves as a companion piece to the original instrumentals. This time around, the band had its work reinterpreted by an even more diverse group of musicians that includes Dead Can Dance leading man Brendan Perry, Giulio Aldinucci, Insides, The Green Kingdom, Cedric Pin/Glen Johnson (both ex-Piano Magic) and Mücha and Yvonne Bruner.
Buy/download/stream ‘A Few Scattered Hours’ from the official Memory Drawings Bandcamp page
