Imagine the scene: Allen Ginsberg , poet laureate of the New York streets and his cohort Harry Smith , avant-garde filmmaker and creator of the beautiful and strange Anthology of American Folk Music , need someone to help them in their efforts to record the birds of New York’s East Village.
They decide to contact a young illustrator/animator by the name of Elinor Blake . Only twenty years old at the time, Blake joins these two as they attempt, using a super-sensitive microphone, to record and identify every flying-singing creature that can be heard from Ginsberg’s small apartment. Why Elinor Blake? Perhaps she was welcomed into such illustrious company because she was not one to be impressed by illustrious company. The project certainly required that there be no awe in the room, beyond of course, an awe for the birds that called the skies of New York City home.
Not long after, that young woman began making another set of interesting recordings, this time of her own songs. She has done it under the name April March . Tracking April March’s movements is a complicated matter. She plays very few shows but consistently sells out the venues in which she does play. France considers her their own cultural property.
Her songs, perhaps because of their visually suggestive nature, appear with regularity in films, including the work of Quentin Tarantino , Gus Van Zant , and Alexander Payne . Her early career as an illustrator, assisting Spider Man's creator Steve Ditko , and as animator for such cult favorites as Ren and Stimpy and Pee Wee’s Playhouse portrays her innate gift for both visual and iconoclastic expression.
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Bilingual, she often sings in French, using the language not as superficial stylistic whimsy but as a separate palette that extends her possibilities as a lyricist. It may not be the typical recipe for mainstream success, but that is beside the point. What we have in April March is an artist working from a set of plans entirely her own. Perhaps this explains that scene in the East Village, why that particular young woman was recording birds with those two older gentlemen.
If it’s more facts you need, here’s a few: April March’s Chrominance Decoder , produced by Bertrand Burgalat , and released in France on his label Tricatel was named one of the ten best CDs of 1999 in The New Yorker magazine and one of the hundred best albums of all time by the seminal French magazine Rock et Folk . Celebrated critic Nick Kent described the follow-up, Triggers , also produced by Bertrand Burgalat for Tricatel as "a tour de force" while The New York Times proclaimed it "her best album yet." Jonathan Richman makes a rare guest appearance on her recordings. And Brian Wilson , so drawn to her voice, joined forces with Andy Paley to record demos with her.
With the release of April March and Steven Hanft , April March gives us her seventh full-length release. As with much of her work, this latest effort is a collaboration. Produced by Tom Chasteen and mixed by John McEntire ( Stereolab , Tortoise ), April March and Steven Hanft finds two old school mates exploring the creative friendship that brought them together originally, when both were students at Cal Arts .
It is the interplay between Steven Hanft and April March that makes this project tick. Both are visual thinkers using music to make us see things. Hanft is best known for videos he has directed for the likes of Mercury Rev , Primal Scream , the Cure , Beck and the late Elliott Smith , who, just prior to his death, played drums and piano on April March and Steven Hanft. If collaboration is central to April March’s artistic strategy, Hanft is the perfect musical houseguest to bring into her world. He brings California to April March’s East Coast.
The geography they create in the process of making music together is not yet mapped, but is certainly going to be one of the places that a lot of people will be visiting in 2007. This is another great stop in the travels of April March .
