david orphan - songs for hannah henley (12inch vinyl lp)

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The thing I love about the Andy Votel-curated Pre-Cert Home Entertainment label is that you're never quite sure what to expect. There's always some vague and crytpic occult connotations with the music and visual element to the releases, but it's all genuinely mysterious in the best way. David Orphan's "Songs for Hannah Henley" is no exception. Orphan, a member of the Finders Keepers brigade, is the founder of the Devon Folklore Tapes research project/label and "Songs for Hannah Henley" is a natural extension of all that he's been documenting with that project. This soundtrack has a strong, running narrative throughout that guides you through valleys of wheezing, mechanical organs and clattering percussion. Unsettling, desolate vocals are like pinpoints of light throughout this aural sea of grey. As the record jumps from one scene to another, the jumbled-medley quality to how the record is sequence becomes one of its greatest strengths. It's like being lost inside some kind of ancient madness, fumbling through dusty corridors while being chased by an unseen, ghostly presence. It is wholly unnerving and I simply cannot get enough. - Brad Rose, Experimedia

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David Orphan's Devon Folklore Tapes is a research and cultural heritage-based community label in the vein of Smithsonian Records, founded by Finders Keepers' David Orphan. Although the label has been releasing music on special edition/customized books and cassettes for some time, this contribution to the Pre Cert Home Entertainment label sees Orphan deliver his long-awaited vinyl debut. The soundtrack to Hannah Henley sees a mechanical hybrid of old Soviet electronic organs, looped field recordings and found vocals lost in an immediate and tensely hypnotic narrative to an account of opposing forces that is as unsettling as it is captivating. Field recordings were utilized and integrated within these pieces, adding more flesh and providing a sense of place. The LP becomes a sound portrait blurring the lines between documentary, music, and artefact. The cover art features an inverted letter-press coded graphic using the text from the story of Hannah Henley as its visual source along with a bone found and utilized within the recording itself. The words to the tale are included in the accompanying sleeve notes, for those interested in those dark details. Cut at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering, limited to 500 copies only.