Ryan Hover and Kay Bertholf, composers, arrangers, and
principle songwriters of Candy Claws, wrote Hidden Lands
on keyboard because they don't know how to play keyboard.
They had to rely completely on what sounded right, rather
than rely on techniques they had learned. Strange chords
and melodies arose that might sound "wrong"
to the trained musician, but sound mysterious and exciting
to them.
Each song on Hidden Lands contains a sample of every
other song on the album. They’d used this technique
on previous releases, but this time around it happens
throughout the whole album, creating a very cohesive
listening experience. Sometimes you'll be able to recognize
a bit of a song within another, but perhaps more interesting
are the references only your subconscious will catch.
Without you noticing, your mind (and maybe your heart!)
will make the connections, bridging the bridge of one
song to the intro of another, taking in the album as
a whole, just like albums should be.
Hidden Lands, their second album and first on twosyllable
records, is a musical companion to Richard M. Ketchum's
book, The Secret Life of the Forest. To derive lyrics,
the band borrowed paragraphs from the book and used
translation software to translate them back and forth
between English and Japanese until they equalized, finding
very cool phrases along the way. The resulting lyrics
are almost nothing like the original words, but are
actually some very insightful and poetic phrases ("Trees,
like all other forms of life, trace their origins back
to the sea" became "Tree of life in the sea!")
While their previous release, In the Dream of the Sea
Life sounds very contemporary - it's easy to place it
in 2009 or 2010 - Hidden Lands is timeless. It was a
goal of the band to make it sound like they had sampled
recordings from the mid-1900s, while in reality every
sound you hear on the album was created in their tiny
bedroom studio. They also hard-panned everything left,
right, and center, like audio engineers had to do when
stereo first came out. A bass line in the left trading
off with a string section in the right; this is an album
best enjoyed in the confines of headphones.On the road,
Candy Claws are an orchestra of 8. Friends and musicians
from the Fort Collins, Colorado area bring to life the
sounds of Hidden Lands.
It is completely unique and wonderful record. There
may be nothing in the world like it.
Hidden Lands is available from twosyllable records on
July 20th.
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