New releases // Jan 22, 2019

James Yorkston

The Route To The Harmonium

  • Deluxe Mart exclusive green vinyl, with signed poster
January 22, 2019
12" Album / Domino Recording Co / Indie, Alternative, Folk
The album was almost entirely recorded by James himself, in the small Scottish fishing village of Cellardyke, where he lives. Yorkston's studio is a ramshackle old loft space, originally used to repair fisherman's nets, and now stuffed full the antique instruments James has collected throughout his life as a musician.

Having created hours of recordings, James called up his old collaborator David Wrench - the mixer and producer who has worked with the likes of Caribou, Four Tet, Frank Ocean, FKA Twigs and David Byrne - and someone who has worked on James' albums since 2003 - to help make sense of the sessions.

The Route to the Harmonium (or, 'the search for peace') is intensely personal; it's the sound of home, of undisturbed craftmanship. Listen closely and you can imagine him putting it together. Overlaying vocal and guitar tracks, adding further with Dulcitones, harmoniums and autoharps, with nyckelharpa, the distinctive Swedish stringed instrument given to him by a friend. And friends and family, past and present swim all over his songs. Remembering them, and those you've shared life with, those who leave and those who remain, is the strongest thread running through these affecting, extraordinary songs. This is Yorkston's world and could be nowhere else in music.
Tracklist:
  • 1. Your Beauty Could Not Save You
  • 2. The Irish Wars of Independence
  • 3. Like Bees to Foxglove
  • 4. Shallow
  • 5. The Blue of the Thistle
  • 6. Brittle
  • 7. My Mouth Ain't No Bible
  • 8. Solitary Islands All
  • 9. The Villages I Have Known My Entire Life
  • 10. Oh Me, Oh My
  • 11. Yorkston Athletic
  • 12. A Footnote to an Epitaph

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