Philosophy Rec.
Silken Ladders : Our Lost Songs(UK,2010)****
It took me many listens, because the songs are short and are arranged heavily, they pass by quickly before you have much time to notice all the details. But I think it shows a general vision and detail, for which you need to take time to look, like with a person where a first visual meeting can't grasp a full personality.
“Dust of Life” is about Vietnam street children who are called like that. I guess it is a metaphor for all lives and life energies that pass by anonymously. The harmony singing sounds romantic, because the voices find themselves with close cooperative creative harmonies. The arrangements are tight with acoustic guitar, the vocal harmonies and arrangements, piano and keyboards, and warm echo which keeps enough open sound and all attention to the short song moment. The song that lasts with me most is the more melancholic melody and nice vocal arrangements of “Treecreeper”, about the news of a girl being lost and on their minds while a treecreeper bird crawls into the trees. It is seeking in nature everywhere. That symbolic image remains strong and dominant. Chamber-arrangements are added to the guitar and vocal arrangements including studio arrangements echoing its voice echoes throughout the song. “Field Song” with mandolin, sharply recorded hand drums and accordion and is led by sharper voices. It has the awareness of its natural environment, the surrounding field, metaphor for how in the losing itself into something, you know you can catch yourself when the whole environment -whatever that includes- is supportive. “Paint The world” is supported by mandoline, guitar and vocal harmonies, has glockenspiel and a harp-like guitar arrangement. Also this is I think about the fragility of visions on the world, which come back to you. “Rocking Horse” is led by the breathy female singer's voice accompanied by more harmony vocals and acoustic and electrified acoustic guitar. Again this seems to be a metaphor of the rhythms hanging in a house of someone not there any more. “God” with acoustic guitar, mandolin, accordion and chamber arrangements recalls the feeling of loneliness in destiny. A more light feeling listen is “Sunny Morning” with a vision of beauty in the sun, arranged by acoustic guitars, vocals mostly with some flute in the end. “Seal Sands” looks at the seals amongst the chimneys in the industrial area near Middlesbrough. Possibly this is another metaphor for what crawls away with time, like the past, the nostalgia, or simply with the melancholy of missing, or just like the tribute to what becomes distance.
Lost songs is also about the moments in life where life could not fully celebrate the moment, it remains now as being completed with a song.
