Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
£7.99GBP or more
Ltd edition 13 track Various Artists CD compilation
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
13 track various artists CD compilation. Comes in a beautifully designed 6 panel, die-cut concertina format (see photos). Comes with a free digital download of both the full album and bonus EP, 'Secondaries.' Note : does not include bonus CD.
Includes unlimited streaming of Avenue With Trees - A Second Language cornucopia + Secondaries
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Somewhere along the line, compilation albums became boring.
Merely a cheap, unimaginative ruse by record labels to remind you that once there were (perhaps) a handful of jewels amongst their straw. Or else a basket into which artists cast their cast-offs, the tracks that never quite made the album. But it wasn’t always this way.
‘Avenue With Trees’ is partly a paean to the pioneering independent record labels, founded 1979-1980 - Les Disques du Crépuscule, Factory Benelux, Sordide Sentimental, whose V/A compilations were not only unpredictable and eclectic but equally cohesive and inspiring. In fact, without these labels, Second Language would not be Second Language - for their exquisite aesthetics and formatting, their cultivation of artistic community, was the blueprint for what we do now. Long, long before this Brexit madness, these maisons de disques were admirably forging bridges between Britain and the Continent, not burning them.
The somewhat open-ended brief here was simple : “Brussels, raining, 1983…” And with that, the artists retreated to their studios to create the picture postcards you hear enclosed – some drizzly, some sunny, some pastel, some charcoal, some improvised, some meticulously plucked but all embodying that nostalgic love for Europe many of us still hold tight to our chests. And although you might not directly hear the pitter patter of rain on Avenue de Tervueren, you should be able to appreciate the sentiment!
Here you will find, amongst other things, an intricate, Durutti-esque guitar lesson from Franck Alba, Oliver Cherer’s sea-salted melancholia, Snow Palms’ David Sheppard’s glinting electronics and crystalline glocks, Paul Tornbohm wearing a multitude of compositional chapeaus,Yumi Mashiki’s beautiful scoring, the impressive debut of Jean Lancaster, a new Second Language "supergroup," Statues In Fog (an album is to follow) and much, much more.
credits
released August 14, 2019
Musical curation and artwork concept by Glen Johnson.
Layout by Jeff Teader. Photography by Florencia Potter and Glen Johnson.
Mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw.
supported by 63 fans who also own “Avenue With Trees - A Second Language cornucopia + Secondaries”
For me this is a longed for sister album to Piano Magic’s swansong ‘Closure’, often that album strayed a bit too far into straight up love lorn rock for my tastes, but this album steers Glen’s output back into the arcane haunted delights of earlier Piano Magic. No matter what the title of the band this showcases Glen’s unique musical approach and let’s hope he continues to create music whatever he decides to name its output. Richard Grant
Delicate folk music that recalls ’60s icons like Cat Stevens and Paul Simon on the new LP from Maine’s Simon Linsteadt. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 4, 2023