Tuesday, December 22, 2009

History of Lights & Shadows


It's yours beginning with a click to the right. It's awfully good. It makes sense. Music feels a little like tapwater these days but it still does its business. Here's what you would have printed somewhere within the package if you were one of those people who procured or bought what they call "hard copy":
A History of Lights and Shadows
All songs written and performed by Sarah Masen 2007 except track 5, music by bulb words by sarah dark2007
All songs recorded by todd greene and tony doling at I’m going to kill you studios. Additional guitars and programming also by the mad duo. look these lovers up @ www.bulbmusic.com
one exception: track 6 was recorded by jon foreman at everybody to the limit studios in san diego, CA. the impossibly hopeful vocal arrangements were also jon’s masterful doing. I give him the Buddha bow.
It’s been years since I’ve done this. I have many people to thank. AHoLaS would not have happened without the kind and encouraging time of Todd and Rusti Greene and Anthony Doling. I would also like to thank David for all the time he gave me to get away on Monday nights and plenty of afternoons to stare into oblivion a little. This little project is dedicated to you. Thank you for loving me so well.
Much of the content of this ep came from reading George Eliot’s, Middlemarch.
track 1 TRY
But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
track 2 LET’S KILL HIM
Some people did what their neighbors did so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
track 3 PLOUGHMAN
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
track 4 SPEAK
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot?
track 5 SO LONG SO LONG
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
track 6 THE RIVER
I would not creep along the coast but steer out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a holder of one of the few hand-crafted lovelylovely copies of this "History" on CD with all its screenprint wonder, I hope Sarah finds a way to mine this vein a little deeper. innocence & experience songs, women's work, hands/hearts/sighs...it's like a breathing gift unfolding.

Baba C said...

I agree. This CD undoes me every time we listen to it. Sarah has a way of laying bare the heart of the human condition, the heart of my all too conditioned inhumanity.
It is prophetic and apocalyptic in it's beauty, simplicity and sincerity.

Unknown said...

I have it, I love it, and I feel special knowing I have one of the few beautiful handcrafted hard copies.

I just wish I'd bought the other two! :(

jenni said...

so happy to have found this tonight! your music has often been a soundtrack to my life :) thanks for sharing your gift!