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Mother of Gloom

by Emily Fairlight

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Please note, official European release date is 21/6/19 but we expect to have stock of the physical versions (LP and CD) quite a while before that and we'll post orders out as soon as we have them, so you'll get yours long before they're in shops!
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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    LP in gatefold sleeve only.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Mother of Gloom via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
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    Purchasable with gift card

      £18 GBP

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    CD in gatefold sleeve

    Includes unlimited streaming of Mother of Gloom via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      £8 GBP or more 

     

1.
Body Below 02:35
2.
3.
4.
Water, Water 03:39
5.
6.
The Desert 02:15
7.
8.
Sinking Ship 02:47
9.
The Bed 03:40
10.
11.
12.

about

Emily Fairlight has a proper folk singer’s background: a teenage runaway adventurer in Australia and India, a circus school student who once sang naked at a burlesque night on a whim, a female-friendly pornography-free sex toy shop assistant, a barista and a runner/jack-of-all-trades at a digital visual effects company.
With its New Zealand rural Gothic/Texas borderlands feel, Mother of Gloom is an elusive creature. Ultimately, the prevalence of acoustic guitar and intimate sharing of lived experience through song suggest it is folk music or, as Fairlight self-deprecatingly calls it, “doom-folk”.
Her vocal style – a powerful quivering vibrato and a stark, haunting tone, teak-hard yet soft as crushed velvet – elicits comparisons to PJ Harvey, Bridget St John, Emmylou Harris and Cat Power, musicians with distinctive voices and a lyrical ability to conjure a kind of experiential realism, although Mother of Gloom can also hold its own alongside the storytelling of Will Oldham and soundscapes of Calexico. Each song is a timelessly elegant, at times distressed, vignette, capturing the essence of a place, memory or feeling, framed by a diverse musical palette with space for the imagination left between the sounds.
Fairlight currently lives in Dunedin and has been composing and performing for over a decade. She has played throughout NZ and Australia and recorded Mother of Gloom with Doug Walseth at The Cat’s Eye Studio in Austin, Texas on her third trip to the USA, aided by local musicians including Cully Symington (Bright Eyes, Okkervil River) and multi-instrumentalist Kullen Fuchs. The album was mixed at Ben Edwards’ Sitting Room studios near Lyttelton harbour where New Zealand folk and country sensations Aldous Harding, Delaney Davidson, Marlon Williams and Nadia Reid created their breakout works.

credits

released June 21, 2019

Recorded by: Doug Walseth at Cat's Eye Studio, Austin, Texas. Mixed by: Ben Edwards at The Sitting Room
Emily Fairlight: vocals, acoustic guitar – Doug Walseth: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass – Andrew Bain: bass – Cully Symington: drums – Austin Smith: violin – Rob Bernard: banjo – Kullen Fuchs: trumpet, accordion, omnichord, vibraphone.

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Occultation Recordings Exeter, UK

European label, est. 2008. Artists past and present include: The Wild Swans, The Granite Shore, The Distractions, Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus,, The June Brides, The Everlasting Yeah, John Howard and Factory Star. We also work closely with Fishrider Records of Dunedin. ... more

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