shdwplay#2: the fog through the trees.

Sore Eros' principle song writer is Robert Robinsion, he gets by with a little help from his friends. Boston is where he calls home but as life weaves it's rich tapestries of adventure and exploration Robert is happy to fall into the searching winds and go where the music takes him, both in his personal life and in the recording of his second proper full length 'Second Chants'.

To just get to this stage he has already undergone a monumental journey of discovery, after recording his first full length - with then band member Micheal Centore - and distributing it by his own admission mainly just to "friends and local radio stations" Robert set off for sunnier shores and made his way to LA. It was there he met Ariel Pink, who had just recently been signed to Animal Collective's Pawtracks imprint, Ariel found the backing band he required for playing live shows in Robert and his close friend Greg (of Gary War fame). So, partly due to conflicting work and sleep schedules and partly due the drain on inspiration forced upon him by life in LA, Sore Eros was put on hold in favour of touring the globe with Ariel Pink.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, Ariel and John Maus (who was enlisted to play keyboards) got stopped in London prior to a planned UK tour supporting Panda Bear, but Robert and Gary were on a different flight to Paris and perhaps due to the slightly more lenient french authorities, perhaps just to do with swirling winds of fate, they didn't get stopped and they thankfully decided not to waste the opportunity and embarked on the without Ariel and re-kindled his passion for Sore Eros. Skip forward a few years and we're back again in Boston with much of the material that he wrote in his time in LA scrapped in favour of what we hear today on Second Chants.

Second Chants is described by Robert as being "influenced more by the changing of the leaves in the autumn and the snow in the winter, rather then the palm trees of Los Angeles" a quality which speaks volumes for itself. Luscious textures fall softly to a forest floor, damp leaves crackle and hiss beneath your feet. It's dawn and the nights thick fog that has settled all around begins to disperse, creating free flowing ghosts that chant haunting, delicate melodies which echo and weave there way through the trees leaving a strong sense of love in their wake.

Love is in fact the central theme on the record which binds all the songs together, the concept of love before existence, the essence and truth of the coming together of two entities. On 'Before Animals' Robert sings "She taught me to love animals / I can hear their hearts beat" which is him expanding and exploring the notion of loving animals and the existence of love before animals. Sometimes on the record the message is lost in the enveloping effects of the music but this was the intention, this is him searching inside himself, existing solely in the moment, relying on the randomness of improvisation to best express his ideas and his beliefs.
Because of this the process of writing songs is a very organic one, sometimes it doesn't sound as though it should but when it does he himself describes it as "feeling like magic", this is a record for anyone who has ever believed in magic.
Not completely in the psychical respect of wizardry and witchcraft but in the magic that surrounds each and everyone of us and binds us all together as one. It's not a new (age) idea, in fact it's one which is expressed and accepted by many a great mind and in this particular instance Robert explores it brilliantly and if you can just open up your mind and your ears then Second Chants will do it's best to open up your heart.

Sore Eros - Before Animals.mp3 (zshare)

Second Chants LP is out on Shdwply Records on February 14th. In the meantime you can check out Sore Eros' myspace here.