Drowned Session is a name and a band worth remembering.
After the lovely mini-album ‘Horses EP’ (2014), the Faeroese-Danish band releases a new EP titled ‘Home to the Wind’. The release has been set for the 22nd of May through the Faeroese record label TUTL Records.
On the record ‘Home to the Wind’ you’ll find 8 first-rate songs, mastered by Mads Bordinggaard Christensen. To begin with, I’d like to mention that on the new album the bass is still handled by Brian Della Valle, but henceforth Anja Bjødstrup has taken over the part.
I hasten to write that Drowned Session has on this album fully satisfied the expectations and hopes that I had vested in them. The talent and artistic fantasy of these musicians have not gone to waste, and the result is an album beyond compare. On their new album Drowned Session further develop those ideas that they presented to us on their previous record. Furthermore, the group has enriched its raw sound with new solutions, motifs and elements. Particularly tasteful is the use of choir in some of the choruses, the warm sound of the banjo, the distorted guitars distancing themselves from the lovely melodies, along with the other acoustic instruments. Thanks to this, their gloomy and uncompromising acoustic folk has become sonically richer, fuller, more mature and ambitious. On ‘Home to the Wind’, the natural collage of natural sounds works out brilliantly. Everything harmonizes perfectly. The characteristic and individual style of the group has also become clearer.
Drowned Session has become a worthy representative of dark Nordic Americana or perhaps rather a lush Nothern Gothic country. Call it what you may – it’s simply just excellent music no matter what.
‘Home to the Wind’ is the sound of light immersed in darkness, full of subtle undertones. In its aura of doubt and in its shadows, intensive and true emotions hide. And through the semi-forlorn compositions wanders a wonderful melancholy. One gets the impression that the songs are cries of the soul; a lonely soul wandering in the dusty wilderness of a gothic wild west.
The music captures you with its melody and the heavy atmosphere filled with pensiveness and sadness. An impression further enhanced by the lyrics, whose words are formed into bitter verses. There is something extraordinary in the singer’s hoarse, deep, and glowing voice and in his lyric. It gives the songs a little more sadness. The suggestive and climatic mood of the record moves at a calm pace, intriguing, and every detail has been meticulously thought through. The musicians master every sub-shade of sorrow and mournfulness, and the group moves from the strong, defiant and rockish to the gentle ballad and folk-like territory. Apart from the influence from alternative country and Americana, they import elements from blues, even soul. And yet the album never loses sight of its musical goal, managing to deliver some very intimate and unusually atmospheric sounds.
Meeting the music of Drowned Session is a fascinating pleasure, and ‘Home to the wind’ possesses a kind of beautiful secrecy. This music possesses the proper amount of darkness and nightly poetry. It draws you in by its noblesse and the passion of its execution. It is magic, untouchable by reality. You don’t believe me? Try listening after dark, in the hot night, with the windows open.
Drowned Session :: Home To The Wind
1. The Death of Jim Kerr
2. Everything Gets Open
3. Canto V
4. The Winter Way
5. March of the Frozen Lanterns
6. Nikolai Bukharin
7. The Well
8. Slowly Drown
Drowned Session : website / facebook