Monday, November 18, 2013

Clara Hill - Walk The Distance (2013)


After a four-year break from recording, Clara Hill returns with "Walk The Distance", which takes her back to her early youth. The unselfconscious sound experiments that have always accompanied her are met here with new inspirations, leading to an album that sounds intimate and incredibly familiar, yet otherworldly.
As a young girl, an East German Triola, a Bulgarian plastic guitar and a small plastic piano formed the basis of her musical world. Throughout her youth, Clara Hill was influenced by music, but her focus was on sound experiments rather than the quest for the perfect composition. The plucking of the strings on her first piano or the melancholic sounds of the bells of a grandfather clock today reawaken formative memories.

The production of three albums was followed a long pause from music, during which Clara Hill returned to these early influences. The break was needed in order for limits to fall. Walk The Distance is not about the pursuit of a smoothly produced album, but about open experimentation, authenticity and the free development of ideas.
With that in mind, Clara created song sketches on her own at home and deliberately left room for small inaccuracies. These little errors lend the album an endearing atmosphere that makes it special. A new environment was also important. Hanno Leichtmann was immediately inspired by the song sketches and produced a large  part of the album, Schneider TM plays a characteristic guitar on one piece and Thomas Bücker (Bersarin Quartett) developed the opening track of the album from one of the sketches. YoggyOne, aus, Kalle Kalima and Simon Whetham were also involved.
The result is enchanting, magical and sometimes even hallucinogenic, in some places intimate, otherworldly in others – Clara Hill undergoes this journey through abstract soundscapes, thus newly challenging both her audience and herself.

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