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JORJA CHALMERS

Jorja Chalmers

Midnight Train

    Jorja Chalmers enjoys a quiet life. The Australian born mother of two lives in Margate, the Kent coastal town that is turning into something of a cultural hub. Yet there’s another, shadow version of Jorja Chalmers, one that resides in a liminal realm; a saxophonist & composer, a brooding, vampiric, twilight soul who yearns for some sense of aesthetic transformation.

    New album ‘Midnight Train’ comes close to severing the two. Constructed during the long winter lockdown, Jorja would put her kids to bed before closing the door in the spare room, building lengthy, undulating passages of cinematic terror, patching together European art-pop glamour with outsider electronics. It’s composed, intense, & challenging – but it’s also utterly exhilarating.

    “I feel incredibly proud of this album,” she says. “It feels like a life’s work squeezed into one space. It feels like I’m saying something.”

    TRACK LISTING

    A1. Bring Me Down
    A2. I'll Be Waiting
    A3. Rabbit In The Headlights
    A4. Boadicea
    A5. Love Me Tonight
    A6. Nightingale
    A7. Riders On The Storm
    B1. Rhapsody
    B2. The Poet
    B3. The Wolves Of The Orangery
    B4. On Such A Clear Day
    B5. Midnight Train
    B6. Underwater Blood

    After supplying a couple of the hottest selling singles in recent years on their first two vinyl releases, Sprechen are back with another utterly spectacular offering on this magic number. Enlisting the talents of Manchester 6 piece See Thru Hands, and making maximum use of the fattest Rolodex around to secure remixes from Skream and Jorja Chalmers, label boss Massey (who offers his own interpretation on the B2) makes a series challenge for 12" of the year here!

    'Connectivity' is a self-produced alt-pop banger from See Thru Hands which delivers 'disco-not-disco-synth-funk-dancefloor heater' vibes from start to stop. The feisty rhythm section and snappy vocals call to mind dance-punk sensations Friendly Fires, while funked up synthesisers trill and quiver around the spiky guitars, conjuring a loved up studio jam between ACR, Prince and Rufus.

    There are remixes for every occasion on this one with Skream cranking up the Italo disco-o-meter to 14 on his bass driven peak time banger for large room raving while Jorja Chalmers takes the party back to a smokey shebeen on her mix that sounds like Tricky sharing a blunt with Aphex Twin whilst King Tubby twiddles the dials!

    Main man Massey finishes off the package with a mucky tops-off style gutter pumper which belongs in those basements you'll often find him and many like-minded souls dwelling within.

    TRACK LISTING

    A1. Connectivity
    A2. Connectivity (Skream Remix)
    B1. Connectivity (Jorja Chalmers Electricity Remix)
    B2. Connectivity (Massey Remix)

    From Bryan Ferry’s side on stage for the past decade to lighting up your night sky with a neon symphony, Jorja Chalmers’ debut album "Human Again"

    In 2004 Jorja Chalmers moved to London from Sydney, Australia with zero cash, her saxophone & a massive crush on an English boy she met while he was visiting Australia. Fast forward 3 years later and Bryan Ferry’s assistant caught Jorja performing at a nightclub in London. The next day she received a message inviting her to audition for his band. She met Ferry at his studio, played some Roxy Music tunes & as anyone who has caught one of Ferry’s live shows of the past 10+ years knows, has been a salient addition to his band ever since.

    "Human Again" was written & recorded by Jorja in hotel rooms after performing Roxy Music & Bryan Ferry songs drenched in sweat each night. Finishing touches were added & distilled inside Ferry’s London studio & then brushed by Johnny Jewel’s glittering hands with Dean Hurley at the legendary Asymmetrical Studio in the Hollywood Hills. The combination is intoxicating. "Human Again" bottles that stark loneliness the artist faces night after night on the road. Sonically, the album explores the spaciousness alive inside the minimalism of Bowie & Eno’s "Low", her vocal reflects early Laurie Anderson alongside the troubled smoke of Badalamenti’s score for "Lost Highway", & the impeding doom of Goblin. Chalmers embraces the claustrophobia of a John Carpenter film cut with the patience & precision of Amon Duul. The quest to be "Human Again" is to be a stranger in a strange land.

    In "Red Light" metal machine magic grinds as a wish is granted. The saxophone wails, humming a new strain of serpentine song. The triggered, vast descent of "Suburban Pastel" unfurls as the landscape expands the mystery. This is visual music that slowly coils its wings around the listener.

    Jorja’s pale blue eyes glance across the vivid landscape. Suspended in reverie, bathed in sound, adrift until the tidal brass of "This Is Where The Night Sky Begins" calls the dreamer back down to earth. As the needle drops again, the petal soft synthesizers sprawl toward the event horizon, hypnotized by the distant call of the Siren. Visions of intimacy & sentient contact triggered by endless weeks on tour. The human heart of a Saturday night still beating on Tuesday morning. The album’s closing track "Ship In The Sky" is the heroine’s journey into the unknown, without a compass.


    TRACK LISTING

    1. Human Again
    2. Red Light
    3. Black Shadow
    4. She Made Him Love Again
    5. Copper Bells
    6. No Words
    7. Our Love In A Glass So Thin
    8. Suburban Pastel
    9. This Is Where The Sky Begins
    10. The Sum Of Our Sins
    11. She Made Him Love Again (Reprise)
    12. Ship In The Sky


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