| Valery Gore |
| Idols In The Dark Heart |
Valery Gore — Idols In The Dark Heart
♠ “Napsala jsem hrst písní kolem roku 2010, které se časem změnily dost výrazně, než jsme šli do studia v roce 2012,” říká Gore z domova v Torontu. Mezitím se dozvěděla více o možnosti nahrávat doma, která “rozšířila její oblast působnosti”, a její přístup k psaní písní. “Vedla mě pryč od zaměření intra každé písničky na piano,” říká. “Chtěla jsem se nejprve zaměřit více na perkusní nápady a basové party.”
♠ “With The Future” je o vztahu na neklidném konci, kde jedna osoba ví, co chce od života, zatímco druhá postrádá směr. Byla to jedna z posledních písemných inspirací pro album písní, a přišlo to docela rychle jednou odpoledne.” Jedním slovem: unikátní.
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Album release: September 9, 2014
Record Label: 2014 Valery Gore
Duration: 40:56
Tracks:
01. With The Future 3:45
02. Chinook 2:59
03. Amsterdam 4:02
04. Character Girls, Quiet Guys 3:49
05. Evergreen 4:22
06. July 3:53
07. New Year's Eve 3:49
08. Clean Break 3:06
09. Lungs 3:52
10. Hummingbird In Reverse 3:50
11. S.O. 3:30
℗ 2014 Valery Gore
CREDITS:
→ VALERY GORE — Vocals, Keys, Shakers
→ DEVON HENDERSON — Bass, Synth, Shakers, Percussion, Programming
→ DANIEL NEILL — Drums
→ JOSHUA VAN TASSEL — Additional drums and percussion
→ LUIS ORBEGOSO — Percussion on July
→ DREW JURECKA — Strings
→ DAVID FRENCH — Saxophone, Bass Clarinet, Clarinet, Flute
→ MICHAEL DAVIDSON — Vibraphone
♠♠♠ All songs written by Valery Gore, except Hummingbird in Reverse — lyrics by Valery Gore, music by Valery Gore and Joshua Van Tassel // Produced by Devon Henderson and Valery Gore // Arranged by Devon Henderson and Valery Gore // Engineered by Dean Nelson. Additional engineering by Joshua Van Tassel, Devon Henderson, Valery Gore, Robbie Grunwald // Piano recorded at Revolution Recording in Toronto, assisted by Jason Dufour // Drums recorded at Verge Music Lab, assisted by Sam Robinson // Everything else was recorded in various places // String arrangements by Devon Henderson for 'New Years Eve', 'Character Girls, Quiet Guys' // String arrangements by Valery Gore and Devon Henderson for 'Amsterdam' // Mixed by Chris Stringer, except 'Character Girls, Quiet Guys', 'Evergreen', 'July’, mixed by Dean Nelson // Mastered by Joao Carvalho at Joao Carvalho Mastering, Toronto // Palm tree and butterfly photos: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin~Gorskii Collection // Woman on cover: Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums // Valery: Self~Portrait // Album design by Valery
¤¤ Thank you Devon Henderson, Daniel Neill, Joshua Van Tassel, Chris Stringer, Joao Carvalho, Bryan Lowe, Revolution, Verge, and all the incredible musicians and people who helped frame, build, and haunt this record. I am grateful to my friends, family, and everyone listening.
¤¤ We would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
Fortaken: http://www.theaquarian.com/
REVIEW
By Emanuele Calianno, September 1, 2014
¤¤ Almost as if apologizing for Celine Dion, Canada has produced in the last decade some of the best female artists in alternative pop. After Emily Haines of Metric, Tegan And Sara and Amy Millan of Stars, another artist, Valery Gore, makes her voice heard with Idols In The Dark Heart, her third studio album. Active since 2008, Gore is already a seasoned artist, but her sound is fresh and has plenty to be explored.
¤¤ The album is a versatile and idiosyncratic work of piano pop, filled with lush instrumentation and complex compositions that distance it from the minimalism typical of the genre. It will spur listeners to draw comparisons to the artists mentioned above, but hit them with an originality that has it jumping up in every direction throughout. Lyrically, Gore tells very personal stories of past experiences, emotional struggles and relationships, and to do so she has armed herself with a formidable array of musical elements of which she displays equal mastery.
¤¤ The album starts out with “With The Future” and “Chinook,” two songs that deceptively suggest the album will lean more or less in the direction of synthpop. But already with the following track “Amsterdam,” elements begin twisting and melding together in a single musical showreel, where electronics find themselves together with soulful piano and strings on “Character Girls, Quiet Girls,” saxophone and vibraphone on “July,” exotic instrumentation on “Hummingbird In Reverse,” and so on. Tempos change, instruments vary, tone sways freely, but the direction is more or less the same, and a beautiful one at that.
¤¤ Idols In The Dark Heart has the freedom and personal tone of an obscure indie record, but the songcraft and creativity of the most seasoned of musicians. It is as offbeat as it is stunning, and that is perhaps the secret of its beauty.
REVIEW
By Scott A. Gray
¤¤ It’s been a long road charting a course of creative metamorphosis from conception to completion of eclectic Toronto songwriter Valery Gore’s third solo offering, the newly released Idols in the Dark Heart. Her previous records, 2005’s self~titled debut and 2008’s lauded Avalanche to Wandering Bear, traded in sophisticated, deceptively complex pop songs built on an organic foundation of jazzy instrumentation. The under~heralded tunesmith took a different approach, born of experimentation and necessity, with her latest effort, explaining to Exclaim! how her process evolved to adapt to an increasingly techno~centric environment.
¤¤ “I got into Logic more than GarageBand and started to learn my way around that program and realized how much more I could flesh out the songwriting and the arrangements on my own,” Gore says. “I always did that anyway but I would write it down — you know, manuscript it — and I’d sit at a piano. This way, it was a lot easier to create from the ground up with something other than piano being the most important thing.”
¤¤ Moving from the technical to the artistic side of her progress, Gore recounts elements of her listening diet and overseas tour schedule that played a part in shaping the development of her newfound approach.
¤¤ “I’ve always been into electronic elements in singer~songwriter music, like Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears, and it all started to come back to me. I was also travelling a bit and I got into — especially while we were making the record — a bunch of German bands like the Notwist and Moderat. I went to Germany a couple of times and was falling in love with that blend of organic instrumentation and electronic instrumentation. I was also getting into people like Matthew Dear and Son Lux, where those two worlds meet.”
¤¤ Elaborating on the current trajectory of popular music synthesis, Gore says, “t seems that music is going that way and might stay that way. Personally, I think it’s awesome; a lot of people don’t. I find there’s a lot of fluff out there. It’s so simple to play music now; anybody can do it. You can just push one button and you’ve got an arpeggiator. Some of the iPad apps you can just strum and it’ll stay in key, like the polychord and stuff, which I love to play with, but it’s nice when you know a little bit about the theory of music.”
¤¤ Reasons of artistic exploration aren't the only ones nudging the accomplished performer into the embrace of digital technology, as Gore laments the difficulty of funding a large ensemble of flesh and blood players.
¤¤ “I think it’s a smart move for artists because it’s so much harder to pay your band these days; inevitably you have to trim down your band. We’re doing a couple full band shows for the release but after that I’m going to be trying to do it with just Devin, my bass player and co~producer of this record, because I just can’t afford to pay everybody; I lose money constantly. I think that’s another initiative to see how much you can build this world around you; but I still have so much pride in actually playing, so I don’t want to go completely hands~off with the instrumentation but I think it’s a smart move to fill in gaps while playing with less people.”
¤¤ You’ll be able to catch one of those rare fully human gigs when Gore and her band do a series of release shows starting near the end of September. Find them below with more dates to be announced soon. Fortaken: http://exclaim.ca/
Also:
By Zachary Houle, 4 September 2014; Score: 8
¤¤ http://www.popmatters.com/review/183971-valery-gore-idols-in-the-dark-heart/
¤¤ “Toronto singer~songwriter Valery Gore self~release her third studio album, Idols in the Dark, on September 9th.
¤¤ Gore started playing music at an early age, taking lessons from the age of eight before eventually studying jazz at Toronto’s Humber College. In 2005, she released her self~titled debut through Six Shooter Records, leading to opening slots for the likes of Josh Ritter and Buck 65.
¤¤ Her latest record, the follow~up to 2008’s Avalanche to Wandering Bear, was co~produced by her bassist Devon Henderson and was engineered by Dean Nelson (Beck, Jamie Lidell) and Chris Stringer (Timbre Timbre, The Wooden Sky). Gore tracked the album between various recording studios, apartments, and houses in her hometown.
Though done partially for budgetary reasons, Gore said she also wanted to capture the comfort associated with those more intimate settings.
¤¤ “The album naturally started to lean on themes of relationships, loss, and doubt,” Gore said in a statement. “Reflections upon both the positive/negative, bright/dark memories with a ‘chin up’ attitude of acceptance while making new plans. There’s a combining of old and modern in the music, artwork, and influences. Traditional acoustic instrumentation woven with synths, programmed beats and electro soundscapes.”
¤¤ According to a press release, the album “charters a course across the turbulent waters of human relationships, encountering love, loss, and the shadows of nostalgia and doubt. Navigated by Gore’s throaty, candid voice, the listener is swept through a lush and lyrical paradise filled with synth melodies, confident acoustics and low Moog bass lines. The end result is an exquisitely crafted blend of woven harmonies and melodic hooks that feels like a journey to exotic shores.”
ABOUT
¤¤ Valery Gore set out to claim new territory on her third and upcoming album Idols In The Dark Heart. Four years in the making, this album charters a course across the turbulent waters of human relationships, encountering love, loss, and the shadows of nostalgia and doubt. Navigated by Gore’s throaty, candid voice, the listener is swept through a lush and lyrical paradise filled with synth melodies, confident acoustics and low Moog bass lines. The end result is an exquisitely crafted blend of woven harmonies and melodic hooks that feels like a journey to exotic shores.
¤¤ Gore was a pianist before explorer. Training formally from the age of eight, she developed her classical chops into conceptual songwriting with a shift to jazz studies at Humber College in Toronto, Valery’s home base. Her debut album established her solid fan base and reputation for innovative songwriting, and Exclaim Magazine noted her second album, Avalanche To Wandering Bear as “one of the best written and produced records of the year.” Now Gore’s back with her most exciting collection of songs to date, where ideas are expressed in beats and bass lines, and the piano makes room for the conversing of guests. The structure of the album is rich and textured, yet still accessible with its pop smarts pleasantly intact.
¤¤ Idols was co~produced by Gore’s long~time bassist Devon Henderson, which gave this musical expedition a natural unfolding as the two passed fleshed out demos back and forth before hitting the studio. Working with engineer Dean Nelson (Beck, Jamie Lidell, Charlotte Gainsbourg) and mix engineer Chris Stringer (Timber Timbre, The Wooden Sky) lent a new dynamic to the rhythms and melodies that pulse through the album like currents, ferrying the listener along with a beautiful mystery.
¤¤ These past few years have found Gore on two International tours of Germany, Switzerland, and England. Along with her band, she has performed in venues across Canada and as part of the Toronto Jazz Festival, Ottawa Bluesfest, Atlantic Jazz Fest, Pop Montreal, NXNE, CMW, and Evolve Festival. She performed with Buck 65 at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, Jazz Winnipeg Festival, and Home County Folk Festival. Japan, Australia, China, and L.A. have also been stops on Gore’s tour map. With heavy radio airplay in Germany (FluxFM, Berlin) and on CBC’s various programs, Valery has also performed live on Q with Jian Ghomeshi, Radio 2 Drive, Canada Live, Metro Morning, GO, Bandwidth, and XM Radio’s The Verge.
¤¤ Valery’s self~titled debut album was released in 2005 through Six Shooter Records/Warner Music Canada. Her sophomore album Avalanche To Wandering Bear was released in 2008 through Do Right Music/Outside Music.
¤¤ Idols In The Dark Heart is slated for release in September 2014. In a recent show review, Exclaim Magazine described Gore as “quite possibly the most underrated sonic artist in this or any other country, breathing new life into traditional song forms with idiosyncratic melodies, subtly complex rhythms and eclectic arrangements that reveal an expansive listening palate. Casual and charming on stage when not astounding with her involving piano work and vocals.”
Discography:
• Valery Gore (2005)
• Avalanche to Wandering Bear (2008)
• Idols In The Dark Heart (2014)
Website: http://valerygore.com/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/valery-gore
Twitter: https://twitter.com/valerygore
Tumblr: http://valerygore.tumblr.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerygoremusic
Press: Jeffrey Smith - [email protected]
Agent: [email protected]
GERMANY: [email protected]
Bandcamp: https://valerygore.bandcamp.com/album/idols-in-the-dark-heart
INTERVIEW: by Chaka V. Reid; April 14, 2014 (Tento článek se původně objevil v březnu 2014 vydání AUX Magazine):
:: http://www.thewinehousemag.com/valery-gore-journeys-to-the-dark-heart-of-berlin/
© Valery Gore, 2014
| Valery Gore |
| Idols In The Dark Heart |
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