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The Gramophone Suite

by Antonymes

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You are listening to me Coming out of silence Coming back to life alone in a song Forgive my absence I was dreaming Of a sound Beyond sound A sound Beyond us You are listening to me Here at the centre Hear where he was She was I was No space No time No will of their own As if they were waiting Those pleasures meant a lot Forgive my absence Where she was I was Where he was I was Here at the centre Nowhere Inside outside Outside inside Shadowdrifting Across the chasm of the day You are listening to me Coming out of silence Coming back to life Measuring nothing as it rises Into the air Tearing open A cocoon Feeling complete You are listening to me Coming back to life In silence Beating a strange reprise Providing an exact time frame Nothing can follow All the chants to atmosphere All the way to nothing Forgive my absence The years flew past me So little room So little time Punching the air Falling away Taking a moment Last chance Last word He had his doubts Haunted look Darkness growing heart marooned The masks slip off Head in the clouds Tomorrow is exile End of message Alone in a song he vanished like a star © Paul Morley 2019
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Half Life 04:48
I’ve been cradling a secret, swaddled in a white envelope, half a century old. The man in the photograph, you caught sight of. The story I’ve never told. A shade follows me, haunting my dreams, where demons and angels reside. Shaming, unveiling, they know every wave of the black wave, that spawned my lie. Do you recall the strangest of days, when mother prayed I would go? Told father to drive me far, far away, where I gave up the secret alone. Then part of my life was always missing. A fire began to swell. Like a dancing wave, came a force so great, and smothered the flames of hell. I’ve been living a half life, up until now, longing for him to find me. The man in the photograph, you caught sight of, came to shore. I’ve been cradling a secret, swaddled in a white envelope, half a century old. The man in the photograph, you caught sight of, came to shore. © Sarah Nixey 2019
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Remember Me 03:58

about

After a six year wait, Antonymes (Ian M Hazeldine) finally returns with a long awaited fifth album, The Gramophone Suite. Fans will be excited to know that it retains the organic sensibilities and classical overtones that have regularly led to him being bracketed with artists like Harold Budd, Ólafur Arnalds and Max Richter. For Antonymes this album isn’t just a retread of former glories, instead he has chosen to assimilate subtle electronic sounds and textures into his regular sonic vocabulary.

Perhaps the centrepiece of The Gramophone Suite is the collaboration with Paul Morley and Sarah Nixey (Black Box Recorder) which explores the subject of absence, and pulls into, and out of focus the late Joy Division frontman, Ian Curtis. In a particularly haunting moment, Nixey whispers. “You are listening to me, coming out of silence, coming back to life… alone in a song”.

While there is a very definite sense of melancholy pervading The Gramophone Suite, it is still somehow by undercurrents of optimism which appear when you least expect them. There is no doubt that this is an important album. One which reshapes the tropes of much of the music produced in this sphere, and creates something unique that touches on human emotion and is genuinely affecting in a way that very few of Antonyme’s contemporaries could envisage.

To quote Orchestral Manœuvres In The Dark’s Paul Humphreys from the album’s sleeve-notes “Exhilarating and always surprising, Antonymes has created a supreme sonic journey to entice you into his evocative world. A discrete and absorbing tapestry of endlessly shifting harmonic clusters”.

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released October 6, 2023

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Antonymes Wales, UK

Antonymes music emerges from the adjustments and erasures where music expresses nothing but itself, from the relationship between continuity and repetition rather than of contract and interplay, from secrecy, from quietness, from pause, from thought, from emptiness, from time, from far off, from itself, from where it is set and where it is setting off to. ... more

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