Out for release on October 14 through Lofieye Records, ‘Positioning The Sun’ is from London-based Italian artist, Quarry. The first single to waif from the long player is ‘This Is The Story’, and the track perfectly sets the stage for the rest of the album.
Starting with ethereal vocals suspended over sensory instrumentals, ‘This Is The Story’ quickly moves into the realms of the anthemic, with electronic instrumentals swelling from well-nigh a third of the way in, increasing in power and volume…then just as suddenly dropping off when to the sensory sounds.
‘This Is The Story’ is not only the first release from ‘Positioning The Sun’, but it was moreover the first song written for the album. Telling the story of a video yack between two friends, one of whom is depressed and rhadamanthine plane increasingly so, while the other is trying to lead them out of it, and prevent him from going vastitude all help. The lyrics over the sensory instrumental show the depressed friend rhadamanthine increasingly and increasingly resigned to their fate, while the increasingly frantic electronica, and shouted vocals are of the one trying to pull them out of their funk. Were they successful? It’s not entirely clear, but it feels like the wordplay is no. The first person is telling their friend, “I’ll be fading / I’ll be heading to / The uncounted speed of light” while the second tells them that’s a “no-go zone”. Eventually however, the track ends with “This is the story of the lives / That won’t be the same / This is the story of the songs / That won’t be the same” – life continues; but with the loss of a loved one, how can they be the same?
Recorded in Milan between 2020 and 2022, ‘Positioning The Sun’ is very definitely a pandemic album. The effects of the 2 years of worldwide isolation and hopelessness are evident from the very first song, and this is illustrated beautifully in the video for ‘This Is The Story’, directed by Vincenzo Campisi. Shot in woebegone and white, Quarry is seated playing guitar in a visionless room. We zoom in on him as torn photos, spliced together from variegated images, highlight the public image we put on to disguise our inner turmoil. Words on cards, a la Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, are held and dropped, in an tableau of the hopelessness felt by the depressed friend. Quarry’s passion when singing, ‘no-go zone’ is mirrored by photographs of him grimacing, holding his mouth unshut into a smile with his fingers. The effect is heart wrenching.
Speaking of the album, Quarry said,
“I wanted to make an eclectic album. I started writing a sort of soundtrack to an imaginary movie. But then I realized that I was locked into my tiny home studio with this new pandemic disease bursting into planet earth, and I was writing songs well-nigh isolation, distance, separation. It was the soundtrack of that particular time.”
“Pandemic permeated the tome with a sense of loneliness and snooping and when it was scrutinizingly finished, the outbreak of war in Ukraine made the songs increasingly relevant, and new ones flowed quickly.”
“The positive thing is that I used a lot of words like “breathe”, “dreams”, “light”, “free”, which ways that it’s not a sad album. There are hope and joy in it. I attempted to convey the unreticent and continuous transitions from woebegone and white to color, and vice versa, using various ambiances, atmospheres and instrumentation, unchangingly feeling that the songs could be hands played on an sensory guitar.”
‘This Is The Story’ is out now and can be streamed and downloaded here. Watch the video below:
You can find out increasingly well-nigh Quarry and his music online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and his official website.
