Voids is the forthcoming new album from Old Fire, the project of composer and producer John Mark Lapham, a largely collaborative effort featuring Bill Callahan, Emily Cross, Adam Torres, and Julia Holter. While the twelve tracks are described as genre-fluid, they are also impressively cohesive with some tracks dovetailing seamlessly into the next. The album is to be released on November 4th, 2022, via Western Vinyl.
Lapham’s inspiration came from the isolation and decay that defined growing up in West Texas, and the losses and frictions he has endured amid such a bleak backdrop. Bill Callahan’s sombre delivery of Don’t You Go, a John Martyn cover (from Glorious Fool – 1981)
While originally an anti-war song, the video also made me think of gun crime and how such weapons are often glorified such as proudly worn Colt belt buckle and the rifle, transformed into a shovel to bury the dead. The musical arrangements add to that deep emotive movement of the song with a piano part that was arranged and performed by Thomas Bartlett, alongside the haunting cello of Semay Wu and Robin Allender on keys/guitars.
Lapham directed the video – alongside his music and visual art—he doubles as a video editor and animator, and has made music videos for bands such as Goat, Throwing Muses, Night Beats, Moon Duo, Jane Weaver, and many others. It’s a haunting song and the black and white video’s minimalistic but powerful imagery is ample evidence of Lapham’s powerful creative vision.
Lapham wields his creativity as a covert weapon against his once and future surroundings as if the act of creating something, anything, is in itself defiant of the cultural, structural, and even climatic deterioration of many West Texas towns. Across the album, and through the concept of Old Fire as a project, he builds a mythical, noir-ish version of his home state and its wide open spaces, painting these fictional narratives with the music.
“I originally created some ideas for this cover with a composer friend of mine and it laid around without a vocalist for years. The song really resonated with me so I took my ideas for it and asked Thomas Bartlett to be involved, who in turn recorded a beautiful piano part for it. Bill was the last piece of the puzzle. I set out to find a vocalist who was a little older, someone who could add to the southern gothic feel of the album. I was introduced to him by our mutual friend, Thor Harris, and it evolved from there,” Lapham explains. “Lyrically the themes of loss and mourning of this track fit well into the overall narrative of the album. With the video, I wanted to express those concepts, and portray them as the father being buried alive by his memories and his hurt. As with other elements of Old Fire, the setting had to be West Texas, as there is so much desolation and decay in this area.”
Voids was created over five difficult years. “I was feeling the brunt of a relationship ending, and the emptiness it left behind,” says Lapham. “Over the course of compiling the album, I lost both my parents, and the pandemic started. These recordings were born out of that loss, and that isolation. The title Voids was a natural fit.” Half the songs feature a guest vocalist, half are fully instrumental (Voids’ array of diverse musicians also includes pedal steel legend Bob Hoffnar, keyboardist Christian Madden, guitarist Alex Hutchins, ambient composer Wayne Robert Thomas, Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive, multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris, saxophonist Joseph Shabason, drummers Joe Ryan and Robb Kidd, and more), and many dovetail seamlessly into the next or are born out of parts, loops, samples, or textures of another—creating a captivating sonic collage.
Voids, available November 4, 2022 on Western Vinyl
Pre-order / stream https://lnk.to/qwWosSOI
Voids track listing
1. All Gone prelude
2. Blue Star (ft. Emily Cross)
3. When I Was In My Prime (ft. Bill Callahan)
4. Corpus (ft. Bill Callahan)
5. Love is Only Dreaming
6. Dreamless (ft. Adam Torres)
7. Don’t You Go (ft. Bill Callahan)
8. Window Without a World (ft. Julia Holter)
9. Void I: Uninvited
10. Void II: Memory
11. Void III: Father as a Child
12. Void IV: Circles