← more from
ESP-Disk'
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.
supported by
m_garrett
m_garrett thumbnail
henrywarwick
henrywarwick thumbnail
lukerovinsky
lukerovinsky thumbnail
Lewis LaCook
Lewis LaCook thumbnail
kkurz
kkurz thumbnail
fpitt
fpitt thumbnail
/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Plaguesong via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 USD or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    5
    releases

    Get all 5 Alan Sondheim releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of GALUT: Ballads of Wadi-Sabi, Plaguesong, Cutting Board, T'Other Little Tune, and Ritual. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      $33.73 USD or more (25% OFF)

     

1.
As Aboves So O As Below 05:06
buy track
2.
Creatures 02:57
buy track
3.
Dad 03:30
buy track
4.
Depress 04:25
buy track
5.
Derelict 02:38
buy track
6.
Guqin 05:42
buy track
7.
Lada 02:29
buy track
8.
Maya 02:44
buy track
9.
Mno 01:54
buy track
10.
Mourning Song 05:41
buy track
11.
Musima 04:31
buy track
12.
My Life 02:22
buy track
13.
Never 04:05
buy track
14.
Plague Hymn 03:57
buy track
15.
Promised Land 02:06
buy track
16.
Pulse 00:29
buy track
17.
Qifleli 03:44
buy track
18.
Rababa 01:27
buy track
19.
Sentence 04:22
buy track
20.
Snarl 01:36
buy track
21.
Temperature 01:34
buy track
22.
Violab 07:38
buy track
23.
World 03:23
buy track

about

Alan’s notes for this album: “Plaguesong was produced under quarantine; there’s minor background sound on occasion. Azure Carter and I worked in a single room, recording with a Zoom H4n, editing in Audition. I’ve kept pursuing speed and its issues, but I’m also playing through isolation, depression, anxiety, and fear. So there are slow hymn movements, breathing slowly, allowing a kind of exhaustion to determine the lengths of speeded elements. I don’t know what kind of music this is, but it’s a kind that suits me, and suits Azure as well. It’s certainly music that goes closer to the edge than anything I’ve done before. We’ve looked out on snow and rain, high winds, violent storms, sunny days. We’ve known deaths of others. The music sinks into the ground, always getting closer to the roots that make it sound. The room has little resonance; I’ve ordered that. I’ve also decided not to name the instruments for the most part; it’s the music and space that’s important. It carries a sense of urgency and ululation. It’s part of us.”

REVIEW:
During a Pandemic, An Infectious Album for the Betterment of Us All

The album Plaguesong, contains twenty-three tracks, which feature the duo of Alan Sondheim on instruments and Azure Carter as singer-songwriter on half the tracks, while Sondheim presents solo instrumentals on the other. The album, released in 2020, came out at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues a year and half later into the middle of 2021, hence, the album’s title. Overall, the album is sonically infectious during a time of infection.

The first track, “As Above, So As Below,” sets the listening experience. It begins with Sondheim on harmonica and Carter singing, “I’m taking a trip to heaven, to heaven I will go, I talk to God, and She did say, as above so as below…The world's a world without its end.” In a sense, the album begins with an imaginary death but to a “heaven” that is different than one taught about in Sunday school.

Many of the tracks underscore the simplicity of this duo with Carter singing original lyrics and Sondheim on a variety of instruments that also include pithkiavlin, viola, guitar, and qifteli. These are alternated with instrumental tracks only in order to showcase Sondheim’s multiple talents, especially with ancient string instruments, such as on track six’s “Guqin,” which features lovely playing; or track eleven’s “Musima” stressing his guitar inventiveness, and then the very lovely “Rababa” that uses what is considered one of the oldest string instruments in the world originating from Egypt.

Just past mid-way through the album, we have what feels like a climax, if one considers it as a continuous narrative of linked tracks. “Plague Hymn” on track 14 revives Sondheim on a rare Hohner Chordomonica harmonica, slower and lower pitched, and without Carter’s lyrics; as if his partner has succumbed to the plague, to the pandemic. However, as if presenting the other side of the coin, it is followed by the track “Promised Land.” Sondheim plays solo on the viola de Braga, yet it is pluckier and more upbeat, as if there is hope ahead. The speed of Sondheim’s strumming creates a sense of anticipation, as if I were running down the road and up the hill with him to see what’s ahead; hopefully to find Carter on the other side.

Carter returns on track 16 with “Pulse,” simply reciting 93/79, 93/80, that is, blood pressure readouts. And then later in track 21, “Temperature,” she again recites simply the bodily sign of “98.6.” It is as though for most of the last half she is perhaps the untouched partner taking the pulse and temperature of Sondheim, who has perhaps been suffering, and that this album is a result of a “pandemic fever”?

However, by the end of the album on track 23 with “World,” both are re-united. Carter sings her lovely complete phrases again and Sondheim plays an Irish banjo in such a way that you can detect a sense of tentativeness in his fingers. Carter sings, “What I have wanted to describe, what is indescribable, the tendency of my work…the idiocy of the real, when there is death….” She proceeds to describe the mundane details of a room, wondering if “the chair needs repainting?” Perhaps she is distracting herself from a chaos outside the door or, maybe, she indicates that she and Sondheim have come out the other end of their emotions during a pandemic.

Overall, the album’s recording has the sensibility of Carter and Sondheim walking along the lonely roads of a pandemic-ridden world with his instruments and her notepad for lyrics; stopping on occasion at a vacated house to record Carter’s expressive words and Sondheim’s instrumental musings and improvisations; doing it for themselves, but taking the time to make a recording as well, in order to share with us that there is still human vitality in the world worth listening to. - Tyler Stallings on culturecatch.com

credits

released October 30, 2020

Azure Carter: voice, lyrics, and instruments
Alan Sondheim: instruments

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Alan Sondheim image

Alan Sondheim New York, New York

contact / help

Contact Alan Sondheim

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Plaguesong, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Beans joins the show to discuss his album release, "ZWAARD".

listen now