KEVIN RICHARD MARTIN - BLACK

Long-awaited vinyl release for this critically acclaimed album from October 2023. Featured in The Quietus (best albums of 2023), Mojo (4/5) and Louder Than War. "'Black' is a musical eulogy to Amy Winehouse, a heartfelt memorial to a sorrowful demise. It's an album of predominantly beatless ambience possessed by the ghost of 'Back to Black'. Fragmented moods and hypnotic drones melt together as it's circular beauty is set adrift, floating away into an endless void, where the original only remains in spirit alone. It doesn't make particular sense why I was drawn to this idea and compelled to immerse myself in the original song, and her life in general, but sometimes you just have to roll with your muse. Having barely registered her whilst she was alive and not cared for Mark Ronson's poptastic productions, it was only when I heard of her tragic death that it struck an unexpected chord, recalling the same surreal emotional impact as when I had heard of Kurt Cobain's premature passing previously. Both figures were unarguably gifted, but both left this planet largely without essential support, whilst they were at the peak of their powers and on top of the musical world. Gone too soon and departed too young, a world-weary voice carried on a downward spiral, Amy Winehouse seemed trapped in her self-destructive descent. It was only years later, whilst randomly watching Asif Kapadia's moving bio doc 'Amy' on a long-distance flight, that I realised the scale of her greatness and the tragedy of the circumstances that led to her untimely death. This album is simultaneously a treatise on lovelessness, tragedy and loss, echoing the absence of a support network when it matters most during such a freefall. And just as myself and others I know shed tears watching that 'Amy' documentary, this album is as much a reaction to the universal emotional themes conveyed within that touching documentary as to the tragic life of Amy herself. I have been working on the idea of this sonic album for over a year, and the slo-mo dream rotations remain as blurred and impressionistic as they are repetitive and haunting... An eerie cocktail of spectral jazz, shoegaze drone and dubbed out ambient music, it continues the solo path I have been developing as KRM. I hope it strikes a chord." Kevin Richard Martin. Genre: Electronic / Ambient

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