Ambient songs, full of lush dreamy guitars, cellos, piano and whispery voices bringing to mind Brian Eno and Sigur Ros.

12 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Alternative Folk, FOLK: Psych-folk

Show all album songs: I Am Not In Spain Songs


Details:
Jefferson Pitcherâs work has long focused on the connection that we have to landscape and literature, and how that effects our perception. There are many questions in these themes. With âI Am Not In Spain,â released by Mudita Records (USA)/Moonpalace (Spain), Pitcher creates an ambient song cycle based on the novel âFor Whom the Bell Tolls,â by Ernest Hemingway, which explores those questions about perception and poses yet more sonic inquiry. While referencing much of Pitcherâs earlier recordings with his band Above the Orange Trees, âI Am Not In Spainâ is a quiet and ethereal departure from the orchestral indie-rock of his previous work.

The songs on the record re-tell in a poetic and metaphorical fashion the plight of Robert Jordan and his lover Maria, from the classic novel set in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930âs, where Hemingway worked as an ambulance driver. Full of ambient sounds referencing Pitcherâs heroes Brian Eno, Mum, and Sigur Ros, lush strings, and ghostly voices, the languid movement of the record is as much a piece of sound art as it is a collection of songs. Containing field recordings, spoken word (in both English and Spanish), the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, fiction of Ben Jahn, nylon string guitar, and a great respect for silence, the record takes the listener quietly through the life and death of its protagonist.

Though the project includes all members of Above the Orange Trees: (Jefferson Pitcher on guitar and vocals, Kristina Forester on cello, piano and vocals, Ron Guensche on bass, Jason Sinclair Long on drums) the initial work was all composed and recorded furiously over the course of one week, as Pitcher finished reading the novel for the first time. Sitting by a fire each night in Berkeley, California, the winter rains abundant, he wrote the Twelve pieces in between reading and sleeping, as his band-mates were all off on vacations. As a songwriter and composer, he was immediately gripped by the strange and timeless nature of the novel, itâs delicate use of space and its examination of the violence inherent in nature.

The great longing present in the novel, is too, present here on âI Am Not In Spain,â the very title of which references Pitcherâs longing to be elsewhere. In an effort to recreate the narrative of the writing through music, Pitcher broke the book into âemotional segments,â which he then painted in sound. Similar in ways to the work of Unwed Sailorâs âThe Marionette and the Music Box,â âI Am Not In Spain,â is a fragile record full of unrequited hopes, broken lives, and the subtle sounds of dark dreams. Both haunting and quietly beautiful, the record speaks of a new direction for Pitcher, one that serves him quite well.