Eine Kooperation von Maifeld Derby, Delta Konzerte und Karlstorbahnhof

Nach sechs Jahren Pause erschien im Oktober 2023 endlich „Lovage“, das siebte Album von Timber Timbre aus Kanada. Die Band um Taylor Kirk hat über die Jahre eine ganz eigene, düstere Spielart des Indie Folk kultiviert. Nach Ausflügen in elektronische Gefilde kehrt die neue Platte wieder in organischere Klangwelten zurück und verspricht ein intensives Konzerterlebnis in Harmonie mit den inzwischen zu Klassikern gereiften alten Hits.

Support: Dino Brandão
Identität heisst nicht Gleichsein, sondern gleichzeitig. Gleichzeitig Luanda und Brugg. Gleichzeitig Fliegen und Stürzen, das gute und das kaputte Knie, die alte Medizin. Eine Tanzmusik als Hommage an die Anomalien im Kopf und die biografischen Unregelmässigkeiten. Gerne mit Refrain, denn Dino Brandão ist immer noch ein Cancioneiro, ans Lied verschenkt und an die bittersüsse Symphonie, ein Freund der grossen Geste. Er faltet diese kleine Popmusik-Weltkarte in schiefen Proportionen auf. Er streicht über die Trommeln von damals, spielt die vernebelten Synthesizer, kickt den Drumcomputer an – genüsslich verstrickt nach allen Himmelsrichtungen. Dino Brandão kann das alles sein und tanzt auf den Scherben seines Spiegelbilds.

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Six years after their last studio album, Taylor Kirk’s Canadian band Timber Timbre finally releases a new record, “Lovage” – his most accomplished and engrossing album to date. “Lovage” is an album marrying perverted piano ballads and spiritual jazz interludes on islands of exotica and psyche-prog with Spectoresque girl-group cabaret. Recorded in 2022 in Quebec with Mike Dubue (Hilotrons), the album features Olivier Fairfield (Fet Nat, Andy Shauf) and members of the Voices of Praise gospel choir (Howe Gelb). Sonically, a return to form following the glossy „Sincerely, Future Pollution“, the album is out now on Timber Timbre’s own Hot Dreams Records and [Integral].

Since releasing and extensively touring “Sincerely, Future Pollution” (2017), Taylor Kirk has been busy working as a producer on several full-length LP’s, including Joseph Martone’s “Honeybirds” and the sophomore recording “Nightshades” by This Lonesome Paradise. Timber Timbre have quietly released two cassette-only EP’s, “I Am Coming To Paris” and “The Dissociation Tapes Volume 1”. Finally returning with a new full-length entitled “Lovage,” the most accomplished and engrossing Timber Timbre album to date. Which isn’t to say that Taylor Kirk has merely refined his working methods. In fact, “Lovage” is a bona fide masterpiece, as Kirk manages to combine disparate influences that would otherwise seem mutually incompatible. Together with producer-engineer Michael Dubue, he reconciles Brian Wilson’s rich sonic palette with the amused melancholy of Leonard Cohen. When asked about these influences Taylor admits these are certainly touchstones. ”Brian Wilson and Leonard Cohen are among many influences that have come to embody what music is to me.”

Kirk admits to revisiting Sun Ra, Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane, as well as Italian singers such as Pino Daniele and Paolo Conte, which might explain the cinematic lightness of the new album. When asked about The Velvet Underground he replied reluctantly “I wouldn’t say that I sound like Lou Reed,” Kirk explains. “But I also aspire to the leanness that he brings to his lyrics and storytelling.”

Another connection to Lou Reed is the wry humor that is always present in Timber Timbre’s work, despite the social commentary prevalent in the new songs, such as the album opener “Ask The Community”. “I’m glad if the humor comes across,” Kirk says. „It’s not always recognized, but having said that, I’m not always sure when I’m joking myself.“

The electronic elements that characterized Timber Timbre’s previous album, “Sincerely, Future Pollution“ make a return on “Lovage,” albeit with a more discrete confidence. “That album became something of a genre study, sitting slightly outside Timber Timbre’s sonic trajectory,” he explains, “as I didn’t really have a history with electronic music then. It was very laborious and much more contrived. What’s different about this album is that it’s much more spontaneous than ‘Sincerely, Future Pollution’ or any of my previous recordings, for that matter.”

Kirk developed “Lovage” in close collaboration with Michael Dubue at the producer’s Studio Cimetière in Quyon, Quebec. “Michael originally invited me to come and contribute to a song he was working on,” Kirk explains, “Because we really hit it off, we ended up putting a whole album together from the song ideas I’d been collecting during a couple of housebound years, recovering from a long period of unsavory touring habits and reform from an unhealthy lifestyle.”

The collaboration proved so fruitful that Michael Dubue joined Timber Timbre on keyboards and vocals with Adam Bradley Schreiber completing the current line-up on drums and percussion. “Michael is much more musically accomplished than I am,” Taylor continues. “While I’ve often felt limited by my own ability in the past, Mike helped out when I found myself hitting a wall or writing myself into a corner. He often comes up with ideas I’d never have thought of on my own or couldn’t execute instrumentally.”

Kirk returned to his native Ontario in 2019 after spending a few years in Quebec and Texas. He made it back just in time to sit out the Covid pandemic and regroup. “I moved back to Ontario where I had grown up, a place I left 20 years ago and swore I’d never return to. ‘Holy Motors’ is an homage to this place I love and hate – but also love to hate,“ he says of the town where he spent the lockdown. „But it’s a good place to be trapped“.

One could say the same of the sonic landscapes he evokes on „Lovage“: “It’s a wonderful album to be trapped on, a modern masterpiece for troubled times one will find oneself returning to again and again.”

Support: Dino Brandão

Identity does not mean being one and the same, but several at the same time. Angola and Switzerland at the same time. Flying and falling at the same time. With his music, Dino makes heads swirl and the splinters of his identity fly high. With a choir, Dino Brandão remains a cancioneiro. He spreads out the small map of the pop music world in shifting proportions. He has an eye for baroque, ornamentation, and old percussion, plays on foggy synthesisers and kicks his drum machine, dancing on the broken pieces. Delightfully tangled in all directions, Dino Brandão can be all this without losing himself, whirling on the shards of his reflection.

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