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LONEY DEAR

Loney Dear

A Lantern And A Bell

    Loney dear is the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanängen’s idiosyncratic musical project where classic song-writing meets complex productions – both wide open and uplifting as well as sensitive and heart breaking…

    Recorded by Svanángen with producer Emanuel Lundgren in a mythical studio on western Södermalm in Stockholm, ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ is Loney dear’s second album for Real World, following 2017’s self-titled release.

    Maritime themes permeate across ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ - the album arrives bearing artwork depicting the international nautical flag for distress and Emil’s voice is frequently bolstered by diffused water sounds at dark low frequencies and the calls of sea birds. For those who know their Loney dear, the constant references to sea and ships are hardly something new. All that is an important part of my inner life, maybe a romantic dream of adventure, but also a phobia, a danger I cannot help but be drawn to, says Emil; Near where I live, freighters pass by every day and the sounds of their engines get into my head. And further into the music.

    Speaking about Emil’s new record - on which he has consulted as a sounding board, label founder Peter Gabriel says; Sad soulful melodies that create space in your head that fill with memories dreams and tenderness. I am very proud that we are working with such a gifted songwriter. When you’re isolating, what better than to be wrapped up in these beautiful imaginative constructions - the work of a master. 


    TRACK LISTING

    1. Mute / All Things Pass
    2. Habibi (A Clear Black Line)
    3. Trifles
    4. Go Easy On Me Now (Sirens + Emergencies)
    5. Last Night / Centurial Procedures (the 1900s)
    6. Oppenheimer
    7. Darling
    8. Interval / Repeat
    9. A House And A Fire

    Swedish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanängen makes records and plays shows under the enigmatic name of Loney Dear. In the early 2000s, in his Stockholm apartment studio, Svanängen made a name for himself by creating homemade CDrs with a minidisk microphone and a home computer, self-releasing albums which, by 2007, had pricked Sub Pop’s ears and they released ‘Loney Noir’. Two more albums - ‘Dear John’ and ‘Hall Music’ - followed, as did glowing reviews in The Guardian, BBC, Drowned in Sound and Pitchfork and earlier this year The Line of Best Fit went as far as calling him a “brilliant genius.”

    Loney Dear has consistently crafted elegant, deeply stirring music, described by The Quietus as “the obsessive work of one man, albeit one that can sing with the vulnerable delicacy of an angel and makes bedroom recordings that sound like God’s own orchestra.” Multi-layered with instrumentation and Svanängen’s fragile yet irrepressible vocals, Loney Dear’s songs bloom with a sense of both intimacy and openness, at once uplifting and heartbreaking, tenacious yet tender.

    TRACK LISTING

    Pun
    Humbug
    Hulls
    Sum
    Lilies
    Little Jacket
    Isn't It You?
    Dark Light
    Harbours
    There Are Several Alberts Here

    After his last time touring the United States in support of 2009’s ‘Dear John’, Emil Svanängen AKA Loney Dear returned home to Sweden and began to play shows with chamber orchestras throughout the country. As such, he was forced to revisit his earlier material -- re-writing and re-arranging these older songs for performance on a grander scale. This experience had an indelible influence on the writing and recording of the appropriately titled ‘Hall Music’, an expansive record that finds Svanängen closer to creating the type of orchestral music he has always sought to bring to life on stage (whether he’s actually playing with an orchestra or not).

    Above all, ‘Hall Music’ is a study in merging contrasts, an album of impossible pairings. The pacing is simultaneously fast and slow, with gently weaving harmonic structures propelled forward by quickly moving notes. The instrumentation is orchestral and synthesized; organic and invented. A church bell paired effortlessly with horns and an analogue keyboard.

    Though at first listen it occupies your ears for just over a halfhour, it is an all-consuming sonic affair. This is intimate music that effortlessly fills vast, empty spaces -- in your head, in your room, in your life -- with a grip so delicate yet unyielding that you can’t (and don’t want to) escape it.

    Drawing from both of the emotional states it joins together - joy and darkness – ‘Hall Music’ creates its own unique expanse -- one you’ll surely want to re-visit again and again.

    TRACK LISTING

    1. Name
    2. My Heart
    3. Loney Blues
    4. Calm Down
    5. Maria, Is That You
    6. D Major
    7. Largo
    8. Young Hearts
    9. Durmoll
    10. I Dreamed About You
    11. What Have I Become?


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