After last year`s “Riverside Burrows” on Shash Records and “Herbert`s Archive” on Dinzu Artefacts Austrian musician Abby Lee Tee is back with a new release, this time on Czaszka Records.
“Imaginary Friends I” draws immersive little pictures of (re)imagined places and their inhabitants, or rather, the other way round.
While imaginary companions are still mistakenly associated with deficits or even mental health issues most of the time, researchers say that they can be an important way to develop creativity and coping skills, not only for children. Beside bedding your cuddly toys for the night, it just feels natural to build them a sonic home too, twisting everyday-life sounds as well as acoustic instruments and arcane field recordings, always exploring the boundaries of human perceptions of nature and artificial worlds. Expect obscure soundscapes full of grunting hedgehogs, squeaking otters, sizzling electric fences and whistling water kettles.
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"These imaginary friends are not meant to be scary, but mysterious, seen by children and only occasionally suspected by adults. (Their hijinks, unfortunately, are often blamed on children.) At the end of the tape, everyone and every thing is dancing; imagine Where the Wild Things Are without the downer psychology of the film. Then a ferry arrives, blowing its foghorn, and takes the humans back across the sea to their boring homes, where there be no monsters at all."
Richard Allen (A Closer Listen)
acloserlisten.com/2020/07/17/abby-lee-tee-imaginary-friends-i-ii-cohabiting-species/
released December 5, 2018
Mix & Mastering by GCound
Artwork by Gilbert Schneider, Karolina Pietrzyk, Tobias Wenig, Oliver Spieker