*announcing* Bex Burch - There is only love and fear /// LP, CD, Digi album out October 20th
*announcing*
IARC0064
Bex Burch
There is only love and fear
LP, CD, Digital album out October 20th, 2023
Debut eponymous work by a new artist on our label, created in collaboration with all manner of places and faces from our extended family...
There is only love and fear is a vignetted voyage via oceans, dwellings, and landscapes by Berlin-based, British-born composer, percussionist, producer, and instrument maker Bex Burch.
((( photo by Chris Almeida )))
Invited to spend a month in the US by International Anthem in Summer 2022, Burch brought her hand-made xylophone and immersed herself in the label’s creative community - listening to what it gave her, making field recordings and allowing There is only love and fear to emerge from the collaborations and environments she encountered.
Sessions for the album spanned multiple non-traditional recording spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago and a canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, with an eminent cast of creative musicians including Ben LaMar Gay, Macie Stewart, Anna Butterss, Mikel Patrick Avery, Ben Lumsdaine, and Dan Bitney of Tortoise, all of whom Burch met for the first time in the moments before they played.
Read the full story of the album in words by writer Emma Warren.
Over 12 dream-like instrumental incantations Burch creates a delicate and elegiac atmosphere. The fluid sonic whole is woven together by the physical and spiritual resonance of her xylophone, and the autobiographical sounds she recorded in her journeys between. It’s a quintessential development of Burch’s self-described “messy minimalist” approach, recalling the ingenuity of Moondog, the open improvisational atmospheres of Carlos Niño, the obtuse arrangements of early Sun Ra Arkestra, and the neorealist aural storytelling of contemporaries like Claire Rousay, Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer.
There is only love and fear is a dynamic, soft-spoken and subtly arresting masterpiece.
"Dawn blessings"
The album’s first track and lead single, "Dawn blessings,” takes us down the woodland path and into the forest clearing of Burch’s musical mind. Rummaging in a dewy undergrowth of interlocking xylophone by Burch, flute by Rob Frye and violin by Macie Stewart over rhythmic vamping by bassist Anton Hatwich and drummer Mikel Patrick Avery, the track evokes a ceremonial gesture of reciprocity in the early morning glow, nodding to the practice of “Dawn blessings” – a commitment to creating new music every morning for 90 days – which began the journey that led Burch to create There is only love and fear.
Although the above-mentioned quintet was recorded at Palisade Studios in Chicago, the track begins in Northern Europe with Burch's recording of a cuckoo on the sprawling Baltic coastline. Describing the process of making the track, Burch says: “Dawn blessings were the start of all of this. I started a 90-day practice to make a tune a day for my friend Dawn. My only job was to breathe, let go, and ask “what sounds do I like today?” One of these days I heard a Cuckoo at dawn, this moment of listening opened up my identity from musician to listener.”
The single comes accompanied by a video directed by Louise Boer, who says of her work: “The music video for ‘Dawn blessings’ is a meditation on the joy and subtle magic that can be found during a slow and solitary walk through landscapes of sand, stones and pine trees; sometimes wild, sometimes heavily damaged and disturbed, but always full of life. It’s a hypnotic exploration of human and more-than-human entanglements in which the body dissolves into the environment and the invisible slowly becomes visible. Filmed during walks in Beerze (NL), Kennemerduinen (NL), Gaujas Ieteka Jūrā (LV).”
((( photo by Chris Almeida )))
Bex Burch
Composer, producer, percussionist, instrument maker... her restless creativity and desire to embrace new musical challenges across a range of percussive instruments have led to collaborations with a diverse range of artists such as Peter Zummo, Kuljit Bhamra, Tamar Osborn, Leafcutter John, Mariá Portugal, Tony Buck and Evelyn Glennie. Her recorded music with Boing!, Flock and her celebrated band Vula Viel has seen her straddle the divergent worlds of minimalism, post punk, and improvisation with equal success.
Deluxe Vinyl Package
There is only love and fear comes on a 140-gram vinyl LP (lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST, pressed by Pallas in Germany) inside a heavyweight matte jacket (design by Jeremiah Chiu), with IARC obi strip and dome-patterned inner-sleeves.
And, as always, we have a limited edition color vinyl option for the first pressing only, available via our Bandcamp page only, which is 555 copies of *Brother Sun* color vinyl.
For fervent collectors of our catalog...
Including today's Come With Fierce Grace, and the recently-announced albums Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek - New Future City Radio, Carlos Niño & Friends - (I'm just) Chillin', on Fire, jaimie branch - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)), and Alabaster DePlume - Come With Fierce Grace, by early August we'll have announced a total of six new albums on IARC across Summer 2023. As an experiment aimed for those of you who collect the whole catalog and have been asking about some sort of subscription offering for ease of ordering / savings on shipments... we are offering this SUMMER MONDO BUNDLE which collects all six of our upcoming albums into a single parcel. Save money on shipping PLUS an additional 10% on the retail value of the albums as an extra *thank you* for your faith in our output. Bundles come in color vinyl, black vinyl, and CD (no mix and match, sorry).
More info and details on the bundles via order links below >>>
Order the Summer Mondo Bundle on limited edition color vinyl here.
Order the Summer Mondo Bundle on classic black vinyl here.
Order the Summer Mondo Bundle on compact disc here.
Distribution via RedEye for US, Canada, North & South America
There is only love and fear is also available on Compact Disc (in a deluxe 4-panel digipack), and Classic Black Vinyl (same specs as listed above). Retailers in the United States or Canada or anywhere else inside of North, South and Central America... Please reach out to your sales rep at RedEye Worldwide if you are interested in making wholesale purchases of this album, or any other album in our catalog. Don't yet have a RedEye rep? Please just reach out to us and we'll get you hooked up!
Distribution via !K7 for Europe, UK, Australia, Japan and ROW
On all the same formats mentioned above, this album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Australia, Japan, and everywhere else in the world outside of North & South America.
If you are a retailer or store with questions about wholesale or are just looking to get some of our records... we'd like to make things as easy for you as possible, please do not hesitate to reach out!!!
