The Black Door is the new album of Bucolic Instrumental parlour folk from the Kamikaze Palm Tree and Sharpie Smile mainman Cole Berliner recorded Studio Laena, Los Angeles, California, The Hobby Shop Recording Studios by Graeme Gibson and at Knobworld by Garret Lang with additional recording by Cesar Maria. The Ensemble are Cole Berliner, Garret Lang, Dylan Hadley, Sofia Arreguin, Robert Earl Thomas, Laena Myers, Michael Sachs, Sarah Safaie, Kilan Thorns, Cesar Hernandez with Cesar Maria Producing and Recording alongside Graeme Gibson.
The album opens with the title tune Black Door a rather downhearted guitar inflected lilt, fiddles rise through the gloom of modern life they find peaking out the other side of that Black Door, percussive accents spring forth.
Bongo Syndicate seem to be slowly betting the house that they can get away without playing the Bongos on this tune, rather this would be the slow introductory music to a totally slow building oceanic roar of Bongo Fury, a stripped back meander through passageways.
Bugle Call similarly is strummed and picked rather than blown, gently stirring and building at more of a last post pace than reveille. Crescendos calling listeners to the beauty surrounds the most terrible of times, keep searching to the wonders of life.
Cathedral sounds like he is in a dark foreboding Cathedral, like St Stephens in Vienna or Reims, you look at the skeletons and bones piled high, mementoes of the Christian folly of the 100 years war, battling with the woodwind, marching deeper into memories captured in stained glass porticos, St Agatha's mortification tinkling with the intensity of her anguish.
Country Tea some fine Earl Grey, a jaunty ride in a Jitney through the fields, imagining you are roaming through October Nights chased by De Nerval's ghost, double bass beating like your yearning heart for some delightful company.
Death Of Stars a slow lament for the closing credits for a sorrowful biopic of a tortured star, ending with the heroes tragic death, set to mournful elegiac strings, caressing the final moments. The Light does not come shining in on this tune, it is more likely that it is slowly fading away.
Poppies have transformed his mind, electronics filter the guitar and infiltrate the sensations they have created in him. A Western Sun accompanies us on a slow horse ride through the country, riding towards a fading sun, jaunty fiddle and acoustic picking. Window Leans Left the wind keeps making it tap, gently rain falls onto the panes of your melancholy heart, comforted by gentle beauty in the suffused autumnal light.
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