I‘ve chosen two songs today for ‘Song of the Day’ simply because they’re from a split 7″ double A side and I couldn’t decide between them and it didn’t seem right just choosing one seeing as this is their first joint release.
The first is Rob St. John with Your Phantom Limb and the second is Ian Humberstone with House on the Hill.
Ian Humberstone and Rob St. John have shared a creative friendship for years but this is their first joint release.
Recorded by Humberstone to half inch tape on a whirring old Tascam reel-to-reel recorder over the course of a handful of fog-strewn days in a frozen Cambridge kitchen in winter 2010, the songs share a somnambulant analogue glow, splitting into pop hooks hidden under well-wrapped layers of warm instrumentation.
This recording is the document of the heavy winter, the cold, cloistered kitchen, and the array of available instruments. St. John was close to getting carried away with the heavy dub possibilities offered by a tape-delay unit; Humberstone resurrected a once-learnt childhood clarinet. A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. Your Phantom Limb is a haunted thing: a hymn that spectral sinners stop to sing.
If you want to get your mitts on them then pay a visit to Song By Toad Records