Description

MiniLP style CD Digipak all card, no plastic, with lyric booklet. Cover designed with Jonathan Barnbrook Barnbrook Studio.Pastoralnbspis a really exceptional album. Not just one of the best of the year so far but of the entire decade TQ has been operational for.nbspldquonbspTHE QUIETUSitrsquos the job of an artist to capture something of the tenor of the age they live in, andnbspPastoralnbspfits the bill a mad jig along a cliff edge.rdquonbspPITCHFORKPastoralnbspis a bizarre album in the most positive way, and its amalgamation of traditional musical concepts within this futuristic pop structure is what makes it so enticing.nbspPOP MATTERSldquoIts a radical operatic essay on political nausea… an astonishing piece of workrdquonbspELECTRONIC SOUND MAGAZINEPastoral presents a grotesque portrait of Englishness in the 21st century . . . people are the scariest monsters of all.rsquorsquonbspTHE WIREldquoWhat species is this What centuryrdquo Forged in a rural idyll in MiddleEngland, the new album Pastoral, by Gazelle Twin, exhumes Englandrsquos rotten past, and shines a torch over its everdarkening present. Told through a troupe of multigender voices, in vernaculars old and new from the shrill echo of folksong to tabloidtinged jaunts, the artist aka Elizabeth Bernholz, presents the notion that ldquothere is horror in every idyll, and danger lurking beyond the ldquoquaintrdquo rdquo.The village square once host to centuries of public torture becomes a floral framed postcard, dolledup for the Summer Fecircte. A sunny, afternoon walk over the hills unsettles a cloud of angry flies feeding from unidentifiable remains. Bigoted vitriol gently murmurs amidst tearoom chatter, as the neatly framed pastoral picture dissolves into a solemn ennui.Four years in the making, amidst lifechanging events, including a move far out of the city, Pastoral will be the first major release by the artist since her widely acclaimed LP UNFLESH 2014, AntiGhost Moon Ray and is seamlessly ontheme, together with Bernholzrsquos J.G. Ballardinspired AV show rsquoKingdom Comersquo soundtrack released November 2017, AntiGhost Moon Ray a fascisminfused hellscape, this time set in deepest Old England.As its sole creator, Gazelle Twin ldquoThe Composer, Musician and Producerrdquo has crafted an album overflowing with a frenzy of traditional and contemporary musical tropes from early music instrumentation the harpsichord and the humble recorder, fed through myriad electronics to the compelling, ritualistic application of found samplelooping. Beyond Bernholzrsquos signature choralinfusions, here reverberating like a warped Sunday Service, there are even shades of lsquo90s house and the oncethriving rural rave scene, albeit recalled as a watery, secondhand memory.In its consummation it is an album that feels pancentury, even panspecies. Set against a verdant backdrop of hedgerows and steeples, Gazelle Twin ldquoThe Artist and Performerrdquo, constructs an eccentric and commanding visual embodiment of alloftheabove a costume fit for a court Jester of the 21st Century.The colours of NeoNationalism. Coke cans, and DANGER. ldquoItrdquo not ldquosherdquo hints at folkloric traditions with a footy mascot twist. The ldquoYe Olderdquo and ldquoThe Everymanrdquo of the English clicheacute. Brandishing a sneer and a hobby horse. A riddle and a recorder. A jeer and a square dance in red, Adidas Gazellersquos, and a mad, fixed GRIN first glimpsed in the single, lsquoHobby Horsersquo 22 June, AntiGhost Moon Ray. A deranged, absurd reflection of deranged and absurd times Gazelle Twin Signed-CD is available for home delivery from Vinyl Records London, only £10.99