Meadow Rituals opens with the deep timbre of an upright bass and Lisa Isaksson‘s voice, and fifteen years on that pairing still does its work. KLOF is premiering the video for Horse Heart below.
The track leads Meadow Rituals: Expanded Edition, a three-disc set that was released on June 21st via Tadoma Records, the Athens-based independent label and events platform founded by Vault of Blossomed Ropes. Lüüp is the project of Greek flautist and composer Stelios Romaliadis, and Meadow Rituals was his second album, originally issued in May 2011 by the US label Experimedia with a cast of 19 musicians, among them Greg Haines, Andria Degens and David Jackson of Van Der Graaf Generator.
Disc one is the original album, given an analogue tape remaster by David Svedmyr and Alexander Pierre at Örnsbergs musikstudio in Stockholm.
Disc two answers a question a 19-piece studio album tends to raise: how do you play it live? Lüüp did it twice, with different casts. Five tracks come from Six D.O.G.S. in Athens in February 2013, with Isaksson singing alongside Lefteris Moumtzis, Sofia Efkleidou, Svedmyr and Romaliadis, and taking in a cover of Lisa o Piu’s Forest Echo. Three years later, in March 2016, a second line-up played KET in Athens — Anna Linardou and Sofia Sarri on vocals, with Efkleidou, Giorgos Varoutas and Romaliadis — for four more, including a nearly ten-minute Spiraling and a See You in Me that runs almost as long. Same songs, two rooms, two sets of voices.
Disc three gathers the 2011 remix album — reinterpretations of Spiraling and Cream Sky by Aaron Martin, Field Rotation, Hummingbird, Dag Rosenqvist/Jasper TX, Offthesky, Billy Gomberg and Dictionary of Ghosts, mastered by Taylor Dupree in 2011 and newly edited by Svedmyr — plus three alternative versions from the original sessions: a different master of Ritual of Apollo and Dionysus, an alternative mix of Northern Lights, and a tape reverb version of Horse Heart.
Horse Heart was written by Isaksson and Romaliadis, with lyrics by Isaksson. She sings and plays balalaika, harp, flute and violin; Jennie Ståbis adds vocals, Svedmyr mellotron, bells and zither, Fotini Kallianou cello and Katerina Papachristou double bass. Reviewing the album for KLOF in 2011, Melanie McGovern found something hypnotising in Isaksson’s tone, and called the album an intriguing tapestry of artists and instrumentation — a session of musicians conjuring up the elements.
The original album was recorded at Artracks Studios in Athens, produced by Alex Bolpasis and Romaliadis, and mixed and engineered by Bolpasis, with photography and design by Jeremy Bible. The reissue is a limited edition, housed in a tall A5 six-panel digipack on 350gsm paper.
Watch the video for Horse Heart above. Meadow Rituals: Expanded Edition is out now on limited 3CD and digital via Tadoma Records.
Order it here: https://tadomarecords.bandcamp.com/album/l-p-meadow-rituals-3cd-expanded-edition
Live Shows
Nov 28 – KLAKAZ, Athens, Greece
Nov 29 – Mikri Skini, Thessaloníki, Greece