LP Edition of 280. Co-Release Round Bale Recordings
$21
Gorgeous set of duets by France’s Delphine Dora and Pittsburgh’s Jackie McDowell. This is the first time we have done a release by McDowell (who we first heard back when she was recording as Inez Lightfoot), but we were lucky enough to have done the Divine Ekstasys LP (FTR 342), on which Delphine collaborated with the great Sophie Cooper. The Dream of Change is another amazing piece of music,
Delphine mostly provides voice and keys, Jackie adds vocals and strings, and the combination possesses an otherworldly beauty that will knock you right off your cloud. Their approaches to avant-ethereal are different and distinct, but the way they blend and amplify each others’ vibrations is a classic demonstration of third mind invention at its finest.
The music mixes classically-oriented passages with soft drones, field recordings, the wordless vocals of keening sirens, Satie-esque ”furniture music,” and psychedelically shamanic segments that will slowly melt your mind. The pieces flow together in such a way that you can just keep turning the record over and playing it all day. As I have just done.
A gently wrought and utterly beautiful listening experience.
-Byron Coley, 2023
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The initial collaborative seed for The Dream of Change was planted back in 2016 when Delphine Dora invited Jackie McDowell to release some of her solo work on her now-defunct micro-label, Wild Silence. This invitation resulted in McDowell’s masterfully crafted drone-folk song cycle, New Blood Medicine. Fast forward two years to when Dora was immersed in the process of recording, L’inattingible, her most ambitious and highly orchestrated full length, and she once again reached out to McDowell to provide some vocal arrangements for a few pieces on the album.
Given their affinity for wide-reaching folk songcraft and avant composition, along with their shared interests in poetry, literature, nature, and inner inquiry, Dora and McDowell constellated with each other organically. This gave way to a two-year creative collaboration, the fruition of which is now an album called The Dream of Change. The music spans from 2019 to 2021, and the vision was to make some kind of utopian pieces that fit together in honest, expressive layers that make resonance in contrast with the gloominess of this sad period we’ve all encountered.
The Dream of Change is co-released by Feeding Tube Records and Round Bale Recordings.
Recorded and mixed by Delphine Dora and Jackie McDowell between 2019 and 2021.
Delphine Dora: piano, vocals, field recordings, keyboards
Jackie McDowell: strings, woodwinds, vocals, percussion
Mastering by Sean McCann
Layout by Matt Irwin
