The latest release on Second Language Music comes courtesy of a loose, informal studio-centric project. Statues In Fog made its debut on the multi-artist, 2020 Second Language compilation, ‘Avenue With Trees – A Second Language Cornucopia’ and acts as an outlet through which the label’s clientry and its associative artists can improvise and collaborate.
Curated and produced by label founder, Glen Johnson, the recordings here, some conceived over a decade ago but only recently matured, might be admired as electro-acoustic tapestries or perhaps even pastoral vignettes. Drum-machines and synthesizers thread seamlessly with violins, pedal steel, guitars, flutes, piano, melodica, cello, field recordings and voice. As Johnson explains, “I was attempting to create a sort of pastoral plasticity if you like…A synthetic, utopian landscape you’re more likely to encounter in a dream than in reality.”
Johnson’s accomplices in these flights of fancy include Sarah Kemp, violinist with The Declining Winter, Lanterns On The Lake, Brave Timbers and Katie English, flautist/cellist who, as the prolific Isnaj Dui, occupies a space somewhere between neo-impressionism and electronica. David Rothon, musician, composer, Clay Pipe Music recording artist, moonlights on pedal steel, bass and Omnichord. Rothon’s creative partner in the newly-formed Out Of The Valley Fogs, Hilary Robinson, adds a bit of everything – violin, voice, melodica, ukelele – to the mix. Cédric Pin, the French isolationist/industrialist, a frequent collaborator of Johnson’s and fellow former Piano Magic member, contributes stately synths and Francesca La Nave, a London-based, Italian poet, narrates the graceful soaring of gulls. North London ambient musicians, Jonathan S Griff and Aye! lay down the rhythmic foundation of ‘Flight Arches,’ on keyboards and bass, respectively.
This very particular mélange was arrived at more by instinct than composition, each player recording their parts in isolation and then passing them on to Johnson, who threaded them into the patchwork.
‘Statues In Fog’ comes in a limited edition audio cassette tape format, designed by Maria Makripoulias and as a download. See the Second Language official Bandcamp page for more details.