Chamber Music [James Joyce]

CHAMBER MUSIC5 years ago Fire Records boss James Nicholls was reading an article about Chamber Music and how James Joyce always hoped that the poems (which chart love from innocence to experience in 36 stages) would find their way to being adapted to music. The idea was simple: find contemporary artists influenced (however loosely) by Joyce's style to finally turn the poems into musical works. Our only directive was to not mess with the words!Minus 5), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth/Text Of Light), Bardo Pond, Ed Harcourt, Jessica Bailiff...the interpretations are different but are all true to the poem, resulting in a totally unique musical project with a beautifully cohesive interpretation of Joyce's poem of love.

In lovingly packaged double slipcase CD and double vinyl, its out 16th June (Bloomsday!) in UK and Europe, and 22nd July in the US. Order your advance copies and listen to samples of all the songs "here" .
FREE DOWNLOADS

Owen Tromans - X

Great Depression - XXI

Puerto Muerto - XXII

Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta - XXVI

ARTIST QUOTES

Peter Buck (R.E.M./ Minus 5): “Scott has always blathered on about doing a Minus 5 Dubliners album, with a song for each story. It's his favorite book, which accompanies us on almost every tour we do, with R.E.M., the Minus 5, Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, Tuatara, etc. When we heard about the Chamber Music project, we knew we had to take part, and were really pleased to get a chance to make one of Joyce's beautiful love songs sing, following in the steps of the great Syd Barrett, no less. Glad the project is finally seeing the light of day!

Ed Harcourt: These poems remind me of William Blake, I'd never read them until I was approached by Fire Records and was immediately interested in doing something. I had the idea of shouting the words like some kind of mad preacher towards the end of a musical mantra, building and building and getting more intense...It could've been easy for me to do an acoustic, pastoral sounding number but I wanted to do something different; the verses have this desperation to them that intrigue me; in fact I think Joyce was quoted as saying:" I wrote Chamber Music as a protest against myself."

COLDHARBOURSTORES:” James at Fire asked us to be involved early enough to have quite a few parts to choose from and there was something very innocent and tender about verse 18 that sat with our own approach to writing. We approached the music very gently, Graham Sutton who produced the track added some subtle atmospherics and the vocals were recorded outside, high up in the summer London air. The album is just a beautiful concept and it was an honour to be involved” ”

Neil (AIRPORT STUDIES): "James Joyce is my favourite author. When I was asked to contribute to the Chamber Music album for Fire Records I was immediately drawn to Poem XI. The sexual conquest of a virgin is suggested in a bygone language of an earlier era that romantically evades the real facts of the matter. I tried to make the music slither a little, to pretend to sleaze but to support the almost polite nature of lines such as "Happy love has come to woo". Chamber Music was the only book of Joyce's that his wife Nora really approved of, and it's Nora I think of when I read Chamber Music, their courtship frames the time period these poems were written in and the day they met became the most famous Joycean day of all... Bloomsday. It's a real privilege to sing a few words by the master."

Matt (LOVETONES):” it was important for us to capture joyces' melancholic and sorrowful sentiment in our interpretation of verse 35 of chamber music. i wanted the song to flow in a dreamlike way, with an almost psychedelic quality to it. i used lots of 7ths and minor's to give something of a moody, distant quality to it, which hopefully succeeds in conveying joyces' idea of loss and isolation.”

QUOTES “Arriving more than a hundred years after the poem's first publication, Chamber Music is a record that shall surely be remembered a hundred years hence” CULTURE
“This should be heralded as one of the great interpretative works” PLAYLOUDER
“This is a real treat for any fan of music and literature” GIGWISE

Full tracklisting is:

DISC ONE

1 I (Monica Queen) 2 II (War Against Sleep) 3 III (Ed Harcourt) 4 IV (Jessica Bailiff) 5 V (Venture Lift) 5 VI (Virgin Passages) 7 VII (HTRK) 8 VIII (Califone) 9 IX (Mike Watt with Steve Shelley) 10 X (Owen Tromans) 11 XI (Airport Studies) 12 XII (Text of Light (with Lee Ranaldo) 13 XIII (Mary Lorson) 14 XIV (Willy Mason) 15 XV (Noah John) 16 XVI (Ian Kearey) 17 XVII (David Hurn & Abigail Hopkins) 18 XVIII (Coldharbourstores)

DISC TWO

1 XIX (Minus 5 with Peter Buck) 2 XX (Lori Scacco) 3 XXI (Great Depression) 4 XXII (Puerto Muerto) 5 XXIII (Mercury Rev) 6 XXIV (Flying Saucer Attack) 7 XXV (Sweet Trip) 8 XXVI (Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta) 9 XXVII (Bardo Pond) 10 XXVIII (Sphyr) 11 XXIX (Mountain Men Anonymous) 12 XXX (Tenebrous Liar) 13 XXXI (Green Pajamas) 14 XXXII (Gravenhurst) 15 XXXIII (Christian Kiefer) 16 XXXIV (Duke Garwood) 17 XXXV (Lovetones) 18 XXXVI (Kinski)