With her third album The Still Life due for release on Monday 15th April, the ever wonderful ALESSI’S ARK has just announced a headline London show at the Purcell Rooms at the Southbank Centre for the week after release…
Tuesday 23 April – LONDON – Purcell Rooms (£12) Tickets
Not only this, but Alessi has a charming video for new single ‘The Rain’ which utilises public archive footage celebrating the use of water in other cultures and can be viewed below…
Travel, adventure and personal revelationmark the new album by singer/songwriter Alessi Laurent–Marke of Alessi’s Ark. The Still Life is a work both lucid and heartbreakingly lovely, a sonic landscape that roams a wide range of emotions, with (as the songwriter explains), “Nature and love, as common threads”.
“I wanted to create a musical landscape that varied in sound,” Laurent-Marke says, “but an overriding feeling of ‘stillness’ remained throughout the album. I also wanted to step back from playing acoustic guitar and immerse the songs in very different sound settings from previous recordings.
Aside from two tracks recorded with Brit producer Nic Nell in London, Laurent-Marke travelled to America to record most of the new album, in Athens, Georgia at the studio of producerAndy LeMaster, who has worked with everyone from Bright Eyes to Drive-By Truckers. “I had heard brilliant things about Andy as a person,” says Laurent–Marke, “and I felt extremely fortunate to spend time together and work so closely on this album. He brought some very gifted musicians on board and I was moved by their warmth in Athens.”
That warmth is all over The Still Life: in the shimmering production, in the players’ performances and in the slow, sweet sway that underlies all the album tracks. “The phrase ‘the still life’ has always resonated with me,” says Laurent-Marke of the album’s title. “In my mind ‘The Still Life’ is what we’re all aiming for, the chapter in our lives that we find peace and understanding, within us and in our surroundings.”
The Still Life 15th April on Bella Union records. Here’s the album artwork…
