About this item

Faten Kanaan's fifth LP Afterpoem is a mysterious, smudgy, bittersweet, and uniquely playful album. Deeply melodic, it continues her poignant exploration of counterpoint as a narrative tool.

From the repetitive structures of modern minimalism and early music/baroque influences - to more languid textural ebbs & tides, there's a warmth in her use of electronic instruments that gives the album a curiously timeless feel. Composing intuitively, her music has often been described as 'strange', mostly because it creates its own world - one that isn't easily categorised.

The album's title refers to the haze of a poem's intended meaning being abstractly fleeting and barely graspable. Glistening threads of understanding still touch us - the poetry becoming intimately personal, and no further literal explanation is needed.

"I find pleasure in music as a language that nudges and hints. There's a potential that lives in things left unsaid... meanings drifting in and out of focus... hovering like spirits. It's a romantic and earnest album... of yearning for lost places and people, while still looking out at the world with tenderness and humour".

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Instantly transporting you to a ancient, medievalesque world - Kanaan's palette of manipulated strings, harpsicord, organ and such like conjures up vivid images of places and times you've never experienced. Its intensely absorbing music for solitary listening. Shut the curtains, light a candle and get totally engrossed. Just no animal sacrifice please - leave that to the ancients.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Fin Août, Début Septembre
A2 Trenchcoat
A3 Ard Diar
A4 Ebla
A5 Florin Court
A6 Snowing
A7 Domari's Lamp
Side B
B1 Votive
B2 La Smorfia
B3 Castling
B4 Falconers
B5 Cascando
B6 Storm Signal