The first album I featured by UK artist Jane Weaver on Folk Radio UK was her 2006 release Seven Day Smile. That title track is till one of my favourites which featured the band Doves, but it is her later work such as The Fallen By Watchbird (2010) “a new conceptual pop project featuring seven chapters of cosmic aquatic folklore” and the 2012 follow up Watchbird Alluminate that really netted me with her unusual influences of Germanic märchen tales, Eastern European children’s cinema and mechanical pop music.
It was by complete chance that I stumbled across Parade Of The Blood Red Sorrows which features on Intiaani Kesä (DIM008) a new release that is available via that sonic treasure trove known as Finders Keepers.
Originally commissioned as incidental cues for a short film by Helsinki based designer Paola Suhonen, Intiaani Kesä (Indian Summer) by multi-instrumentalist Jane Weaver has since grown into a fully formed project lending itself to a number of further cinematic productions and creative applications . Appearing alongside Demdike Stare and Brigitte Fontaine in the vampire film Kiss Of The Damned by Xan (daughter of John) Cassevetes and recut and performed as an alternative rescore to Eiichi Yamamoto’s Belladonna Of Sadness for various live performances, this set of well-crafted themes takes it’s brazen influences of Nicolai, Dell’Orso, Alessandroni and Daniella Casa back to their purest analog recording origins with startling effect. Recorded in an old vicarage near the Peak District, housing a unique analogue experimental studio, Intiaani Kesä hears Weaver deploy a wide range of instruments including tubular bells, bowed guitars, vintage Goblinised Roland string synths, detuned pianos, church bells, Roland guitar synths, harpsichords and ex-Radiophonic Workshop custom equipment as accompaniment to wordless and onomatopoeic chorale vocals recorded on valve microphones with space echo, sonic room reverbs and bespoke experimental tape delays. Made in a disciplined and unforgiving environment without modern technological shortcuts these self-initiated creative research prototypes were not initially intended for commercial release but are thankfully gathered here as songs in there own right independent of context.