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It took three years for the songs on Minimalist & Anchored to bloom from mere and distant thoughts into the unified collection you are now holding. That time was rife with technological doom, stints abroad, homecomings, loves built and dismantled and built anew, sporadic tours in support of a half-finished album, excess thumb-twiddling and a whole bunch of other broke-ass shit that we’ll just refer to here as mixing sessions. But all told, the hands that were sat on did not go numb in vain. Vandenberg’s personal growth branched out into the songs, giving them a vibrancy that three years ago would have been impossible.
Initially, Minimalist
& Anchored was recorded in a way that mirrored the isolation of
each songs lyrics - it was just Vandenberg's voice and a hollow guitar.
But over time, the whole affair was stratified, and the record now includes
a delegation of nine musicians playing a spectrum of instruments including
electric guitar, drums, bass, cello, female vocals, wurlitzer, piano and
trumpet. The presence of others often works to amplify one's sense of solitude,
and that is what's at work here. The layers of accompaniment are like treacherous
bedfellows who you intuit will leave at first light. In their presence
you're utterly distilled: Your loneliness has at long last been justified.
Vandenberg allies himself
with monoliths: Nick Drake, Mark Kozelek and Mark Eitzel—he’s internalized
their inwardness, their inflections, their hums and their buoyant strums.
But with Minimalist & Anchored, he’s struck out on his own.
Soft combustion in confined spaces. Hand drawn emotional road maps. To
big worlds. To smaller ones. To his heart. To yours. Listen up.
Minimalist & Anchored
CD Album 2006 | Silber 052 11 tracks, 40 minutes $12 ($18 international, $5 download (256kbps, ~73 megs)) :
Listen to the track Minimalist & Anchored
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