Taken from a Record Store Day 2019 split 10” between Alex Rex & Trembling Bells, Alex has revealed an accompanying video for the trad. Irish “Night Visiting Song”, filmed by Oliver Neilson.
Alex shared the following on the split 10”:
After 10 years of being in a band which has felt more like a family, these are the final two statements from Trembling Bells. “I Am The King” is inspired by various Greek myths. It’s about self-destruction- feeling so jaded by the fruit machine of life that you start taking yourself apart as the final act of entertainment. “Medusas” sounds like it’s a Greek myth but is actually about jelly fish.
The Alex Rex songs are both covers. In April 2018 my younger brother, Alastair, passed away in his sleep. I dream about him regularly. In one of my dreams, we sang the “Night Visiting Song” together as a way of saying goodbye and to induce his passage into the world beyond. “You Know More Than I Know” is a John Cale song that my mum likes, and all art is basically the artists saying “mummy, look at me”.
https://vimeo.com/320726816
Alex Rex Live Dates
13th April- Golden Lion, Todmorden
14th April- Bishops House, Sheffield
30th April- Soho Radio with Pete Paphides
9th June- Woolf festival, Wiltshire
20th July- Doune The Rabbit Hole festival
15th August- Greenman Festival
17th August- Contrapop festival
31st August- Mosely Folk Festival
15th September- Freakender festival, Glasgow
To his credit, Neilson realises that life is patterned by confusion; there is no way to solve its riddles or to cheat death. What he has been able to do here is to take an event – a very real event, and one saturated in the most visceral of emotional responses – and create from it a single cohesive work of art that nonetheless functions as an integral part in an impressive and growing catalogue of work. Thomas Blake on Otterburn
Read our review of Alex Rex’s latest album Otterburn here.