Lying Swans - White-Blue Marbled Vinyl

"The Lying Swans" unfolds like a work of Magic Realism, inhabited by birds, saints, sirens, bloody faces, ghost ships and spectral apparitions, inviting listeners into Gloria de Oliveira's most immediate and complex work to date. de Oliveira's third full length (debut proper at the same time) comes along like a work of Gothic literary fiction set in motion by the image of a woman fleeing a haunted house; this central image also shaped the album's visual world. Produced by Randall Dunn (Anna von Hausswolff, Sunn O))), Marissa Nadler) and recorded between Iceland, New York and Berlin, the result is an oneiric world where enchantment and danger coexist. The successor to 2020s EP compilation "Fascination" (Reptile Music) and "Oceans of Time" (Sacred Bones, 2022), her collaboration with David Lynch's longtime sound designer Dean Hurley, "The Lying Swans" leads de Oliveira into new territories. Thematically as well as sonically, these nine songs seem to be stepping out of the misty realms of reverb and gauzy fuzz, displaying an earthier, more tactile and thereby vulnerable side. Still, her seraphic, yearning voice remains the focal point, flanked by a stunning cast of musicians, which includes drummer Matt Chamberlain (David Bowie, Tori Amos, Pearl Jam), guitarist Lennard Zander and cellist Gyda Valtysdóttir (múm); Marilu Donovan (LEYA, Eartheater, Julie Byrne) plays harp, Ulfur Hansson's synthesizer, while Ambient icon Tor Lundvall delivers a rare spoken word performance. Lina Andonovska's transverse flute has a leading role, imbuing the songs with both an airy and unsettling tone, indebted as much to de Oliveira's Brazilian roots as to 1970s & 1980s Giallo soundtracks, the atmospheric Italian horror mysteries that contain both stylized graphic violence and voyeurism, and splendid beauty. Drawing inspiration from poetry, literature, film and visual art as much as music, de Oliveira and Dunn crafted an album that moves effortlessly between the spectral and the pastoral, where echoes of Fantasy and Giallo film scores, ancient folk traditions and the rhythmic tenderness of Bossa Nova, MPB and Tropicália converge. The lyrics likewise weave together mythology with allusions to Milton's Paradise Lost and the poetry of John Keats, Emily Brontë and Anne Sexton. A truly sublime work of art. Available as CD (Digisleeve) w/ booklet or as LP (classic black, coke bottle green or white-blue marbled vinyl) w/ printed inner & inside-out jacket.