Remixes of Juni Habel’s ‘Pearl Cloud Song’ (from her recent ‘Evergreen In Your Mind’ album) by Tom Sharkett and Minotaur Shock

Tom Sharkett's first remix committed to vinyl since his official DFA edit of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Home’.

Very limited white label x 200.

Norwegian folk artist Juni Habel's latest album Evergreen In Your Mind (BR025) is largely an ode to letting go, and at it’s inquisitive heart can be found ‘Pearl Cloud Song’. An instrumental four-and-a-half minutes, it came from a guitar tuning that Habel stumbled upon, the song tumbling out of the discovery on its own accord. Lush and vibrant and bristling with life, it’s a beautiful backdrop to stepping into nature, bringing together a simple drum machine pattern, steel-string guitar, pedal steel, considered effects, and the flicker of a voice somewhere in the far-off distance. Juni says "it gives the sensation of flying." With such ingredients it was rife for a remix.

'Pearl Cloud Song Reformations' is a very limited 12" (also available digitally) which features two remixes/reformations from Tom Sharkett and Minotaur Shock and also includes Juni Habel's original version. There will only be 200 ever made.

Tom Sharkett is a producer from Manchester, now based in Todmorden. Having cut his teeth as a founding member of synth-wave band W. H. Lung. Tom has gone on to forge his own path as an electronic artist with music on Optimo Music, DFA and Test Pressing. His work leans towards dark, wonky and psychedelic electronics and his edit of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Home’ grabbed the attention of James Murphy which led to an official DFA release. The cosmic choogle of his 'Pearl Cloud Song Reformation' is Sharkett's first remix committed to vinyl since.

Minotaur Shock is the long-standing electronic project of Bristol-based producer David Edwards. With a discography spanning labels like 4AD, Melodic and Bytes, Edwards balances pastoral charm with IDM sensibilities, creating soundscapes that are as much about the heart as they are the head.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Man of the moment Tom Sharkett and Bristol veteran Minotaur Shock take the stems from Norwegian folk star Juni Habel and go on a technicoloured, psychedelicized pastoral romp that recalls the greatness of Lemonjelly and The KLF with deliciously picked folk guitar inflections and a blue-sky, day-dreaming aesthetic that's simply divine. This is my jam right now people!

TRACK LISTING

A.
1. Pearl Cloud Song Tom Sharkett Reformation

B.
1. Pearl Cloud Song Minotaur Shock Reformation
2. Pearl Cloud Song Juni Habel Original Formation

Stunning and more confident follow up to 2023’s breakthrough album ‘Carvings’. Released on Basin Rock who released breakthrough albums for Julie Byrne, Jim Ghedi, Nadia Reid, Andrew Tuttle, Aoife Nessa Frances.

‘Sharing the same dusky light as Jessica Pratt’s records, the Norwegian singer traces the gap between reality and memory in swaddled vocal harmonies, to a reassuring acoustic guitar motif’

Evergreen In Your Mind, the new and third album from Norwegian singer-songwriter Juni Habel, exists in two worlds at the same time. Songs were recorded in quiet corners of her home, on the piano in the school where she works, and it uses the physical world around her to provide percussion. It also takes place, as she herself attests, within a dream; an imagined place in which her desire for oneness with each other and the world around us is finally realised.

Evergreen In Your Mind was recorded with co-producer Stian Skaaden, it’s Habel’s first album in three-years, following the breakthrough success of 2023’s Carvings LP. Formed of eleven new recordings, the songs here remain delicate, Habel’s voice playing an elegant lead role – but there are fluctuations too.

These small shifts in Habel’s sound result in a notable stride forward. More focus went into the groove of these songs. Playfulness was embraced and, perhaps most importantly, patience played a fundamental role in shaping the album with time and care given to every element of these songs. “We always aim to capture effortlessness - but the way of getting there is anything but effortless,” Habel reveals.

This extra time that was given to the project gave Juni the space to nurture her creativity. She would read and listen to music, hike into the hills, place herself within nature and seek out stillness. Not as a deviation from her work but as a fundamental part of the process. It’s a search for connection, and it’s a recurring theme across Evergreen In Your Mind; the polarity between stillness and passion, also our resistance to these desires, and the things we want to live and experience.

The album’s title-track and fist single feels indicative of this narrative. A gorgeous, delicate folk song, it finds Habel out in the woods, hiding from real life, caught in the space between the natural world and the pull of modernity. “It’s nostalgic. It’s about looking back and realizing things will be different,” Habel says. “Its about visualizing something beautiful in your head that you keep clinging onto.”

The album cover for Evergreen In Your Mind also adds shimmer. A striking photograph of Juni among the mountains, it was taken on a day trip to Rondane, a five-hour drive each way from her home. Habel explains. “It was awe-inspiring to drive all the way up into the high mountains, with its wide plains and intense colours. For an album with music that at times likes to hide itself, I think it fitted nicely with such an epic, grand, and powerful landscape.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I'm becoming more and more of a Basin Rock fan with every release. Since Andre Tuttle's brilliant Fleeting Adventure back in 2022, they've been the bastion of off-piste folk and ambient country. Juni Habel's 'Evergreen...' fits right into this niche with aplomb, gorgeously drifting guitars and warmly saturated tape hiss beneath Habel's evocative vocal. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Another High
2 I’d Like To See It
3 Pearl Cloud Song
4 Tessa
5 I Lay My Trust

B1 Evergreen In Your Mind
2 Stand So Still
3 Gitarhum
4 Sage
5 Colours Close To Me
6 Statues

"Meet Norway's new pastoral folk voice - guitar lines ripple like Nick Drake strumming for Karen Dalton - think Sibylle Baier or Julie Byrne" Uncut.

Crackled radio-like transmissions from Norway's rural hinterland. Juni Habel's fragile finger-picked lullabies warm themselves by the open fire with her rich intimate voice atop twinkling arrangements and strange percussive instrumentation. Like glowing embers in the dark, these songs are odes to life and death, the beauty of belonging and human kinship with nature.

Push open the door of the old school house in the remote flatlands of Southern Norway that Juni Habel shares with her close-knit family and climb the stairs; you’ll find yourself in a former classroom – the home of her new album Carvings. A songbook of life’s lessons offering an expansive perspective as it navigates personal shadows between darkness and light.

“I knew I wanted to write from a larger perspective. I wanted to write about the course of nature, and the people in it - life and death, beauty and tragedy.” Juni says, “loss - the search for the dead - grasping to find the words, and liberation of giving that up. I also wanted to explore my own kinship with nature - a sense of belonging, and notice what is around with gratitude and zest for life.”

This unyielding spirit of family and nature is etched into Carvings’ unschooled approach. With beauty in mock-simplicity and radiating humanity like the music of Tia Blake, Julie Byrne or Myriam Gendron, Juni’s songwriting unfolds on her own terms, and is the sound of facing whatever mother nature decides will find its way to the top of the list.

Recorded between the classroom (‘big hall’), the hallway on the 2nd floor, and her bedroom with simple gear and vocals laid down in a single take. Co-producer, musician and singer Stian Skaaden, became her melodic confidant and experimental co-conspirator halving the burden by building the album’s layers through blowing a pipe, playing bow on the banjo, bottles or glockenspiel. “With this album I wanted to lean deeper into the process. The title Carvings illustrates thoroughness. It was a vulnerable project, to strive for creating something truly beautiful, to pour my soul into it,” she says.

Uninhibited by the possibility of ‘mistakes’ and jamming until she struck gold, Juni confidently discovered the truest expression of herself. “It takes courage to do things ‘wrong’ with uncertainty, record lyrics which are strange but feel right, on crappy mics, it can be good to fumble a bit,” Juni says before tellingly, “the joy of playing is quite fragile. I have to protect it. You can't use your head, you have to be inside the song.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Yet another killer release from Basin Rock, with Juni Habel's 'Carvings' providing the perfect fireside listening. Brittle folk guitars crescendo with Habel's echoing vocals hovering over the top. Organically growing melodies come out of the smallest seed and bloom into heady orchestrated bliss.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Rhythm Of The Tides
2. I Went Out And Sought For Your Name
3. Little Twirl
4. Valiant
Side B
5. When We Awake
6. Chicory
7. Drifting Pounds Of The Train
8. I Carry You, My Love