The first vinyl edition of Let the Darkness Fall, a forgotten corner from the vast discography of Suzanne Langille & Loren Connors, joined here by David Daniell and Andrew Burnes (of the Atlanta-based group San Agustin).
Let the Darkness Fall was recorded in the summer of 1998 on a Tascam Porta-5 in Loren and Suzanne's Brooklyn living room, and issued the following year as a limited CD by Secretly Canadian.
The tender gloom of Let the Darkness Fall sounds like a broadcast of some private séance. The trio of guitarists here show a beautiful restraint, hovering just underneath vocalist Suzanne Langille's ephemeral poetry. Once they hit RECORD, the sensitivity of the players melded this quartet into a sole-entity; finishing each other's phrases in slow motion. Suzanne's gentle voice glows through the wispy guitar shadows with a quiet determination. One could almost imagine her building a nest out of the guitar lines she's gathered.
This collection of musicians is a precursor to the band Haunted House, a wild sort of jam-band playing the blues without playing structure. Recital continues the series of Loren Connors-related editions, stretching from his art books Wildweeds & Night of Rain, to his masterpiece solo LPs Airs & Lullaby. And Recital is equally thrilled to highlight Suzanne Langille's mystifying command of voice and word and the intricate guitar work of Andrew Burnes and David Daniell. Come revisit the mist that filled that living room 25 years ago.
A lyricist as well as vocalist, Suzanne Langille is as devoted to the spoken word as to song. Known for her work with her husband guitarist
Loren Connors and the band Haunted House, Langille has also performed repeatedly with overtones singer and percussionist Neel Murgai, multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, the band San Agustin, violinist Laura Ortman, guitarist David Daniell and poet Yuko Otomo.
One of the world's most singular guitarists, Loren Mazzacane Connors (born 1949) is among few living musicians whose prolific body of work can be said to be wholly justified in its plenitude. On more than 100 records across almost four decades, Connors has wrung distinct shades of ephemeral blues from his guitar, its sound ever-shifting while remaining unmistakably his own. From his early, splintered take on the Delta bottleneck style through his song-based albums with Suzanne Langille and on to the painterly abstraction that defines his current work, Connors has earned the admiration of many, leading to collaborations with the likes of John Fahey,
Jim O'Rourke,
Alan Licht,
David Grubbs,
Keiji Haino, and
Kim Gordon.
