DIALECT is the long-running musical exploration of Liverpool-based artist Andrew PM Hunt; and the track we have here for you today, “Under~Between”, which serves as announcement of his new album, is delightfully wayward cross-pollination of acoustic and synthetic ensembles with human voice, synth swoops and chatterings, so much more. It’s like the blissful soundtrack to the most psychedelic foreign animation you half-remember from childhood, unexpected sounds and melodies, bright tones swapping with strings, whispered voices, playful soundscapes. Pretty wow, actually.
Dialect is all set to release his fourth album, Under~Between, on March 19th, and by way of celebrating that has released a short film to accompany that track, which is exactly the kind of trippy dreamscape it should be. Watch below.
Visual artist Sara Ludy, the mastermind behind the video, says: “[It] was inspired by the cadence of the poem; how a vision unfolds of a landscape, settling you into its expansiveness while augmenting daydreams.
“When you’re in this state of high vibration, you open yourself up to accessing collective pasts that are embedded throughout the landscape. You become aware of your connection to the cosmos and to everything.
“The video is a reference to all those feelings, how personal and collective experiences are woven into a material we become a part of and observe.”
The eleven tracks of Under~Between began their life as chamber pieces commissioned by the new music group Immix Ensemble; an opportunity that Andrew says gave a chance to move outside hardwired creative practices, enter a new and fertile phase. Writing for woodwinds, strings, piano and synthesizer, he focussed more on melody.
The collaborative nature of the work soon expanded beyond the Immix Ensemble to his own home – one he shares with 15 others, mainly also Liverpool scene creatives.
There’s very much still that humanist element of speech but, in place of the rapturous monologues that filled 2017’s Loose Blooms, there’s a more blissful chatter of communion and connection, a stillness. I get little inflections of Penguin Cafe, of the electronic whimsy of Múm; the great, meandering vision of Daniel Figgis’s Skipper. But overall it’s a very, very singular vision.
Each piece on Under~Between was pruned delicately from its original form as performed by the ensemble and then remixed and rerubbed by Andrew; in his words, he “tend[ed] the garden.”
“I wanted to create something where there was a constant dialogue between the natural and technological, the mythical and the magical,” he says.
“Under~Between explores the limits of human knowledge and control; it gently reminds us of the transitional state of our surroundings and indeed ourselves.”
Dialect’s Under~Between will be released by RVNG Intl on March 19th, digitally and on vinyl; a portion of the proceeds will benefit Refugee Women Connect, an organization working to build a safe life in the UK for all women in the asylum seeker and refugee community. Pre-order your copy here.
Follow Andrew PM Hunt on Twitter and Instagram; and RVNG Intl. on those same socials, here and here respectively.
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