Convocations, the new instrumental album from Sufjan Stevens, moves like a two-and-a-half-hour electronic/ambient mass for our present age of anxiety and dread; its 49 tracks work through the stages of grief and gladness with emotional mood music that is dreamy, dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, and calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through isolation, uncertainty, and loss. Its five sonic cycles (Meditations, Lamentations, Revelations, Celebrations, and Incantations) replicate different stages of mourning, healing and catharsis, working both to soothe our unease while savoring a renewed sense of awe and wonder for being alive in these unprecedented times.

Stevens initiated Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about death, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much. That said, this is not a personal record, but a universal one. Convocations is built on a shared experience that seeks to be honest about how complicated grief can be in these difficult times—the pain and separation, the anxiety, the unknown, the absolute joy of memory. This is also an album made in lockdown, when we were all cloistered in whatever space we had. Convocations arrives just as we begin to emerge from a year whose losses we will calculate for a lifetime.

It is, then, right on time, as we begin to process our grief and try to carry on with it.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This latest outing from the endlessly talented Stevens truly is an epic and sees him turn his hand to the world of ambient music in a 6LP collection. it's wonderfully tender and beautifully accomplished, further proving Sufjan can turn his hand to anything, no matter the genre.

TRACK LISTING

Volume 1: Meditations
SIDE A
Meditation I 3:39
Meditation II 2:26
Meditation III 4:04
Meditation IV 2:09
Meditation V 2:10
SIDE B
Meditation VI 2:16
Meditation VII 2:33
Meditation VIII 1:48
Meditation IX 2:11
Meditation X 3:40

Volume 2: Lamentations
SIDE C
Lamentation I 3:48
Lamentation II 2:24
Lamentation III 3:17
Lamentation IV 1:59
Lamentation V 4:10
SIDE D
Lamentation VI 4:42
Lamentation VII 1:51
Lamentation VIII 3:34
Lamentation IX 3:29
Lamentation X 1:58

Volume 3: Revelations
SIDE E
Revelation I 3:20
Revelation II 2:53
Revelation III 2:01
Revelation IV 4:09
Revelation V 2:52
SIDE F
Revelation VII 4:03
Revelation VIII 2:51
Revelation IX 4:38
Revelation X 4:17

Volume 4: Celebrations
Celebration I 2:19
Celebration II 5:55
Celebration III 3:10
Celebration IV 3:22
Celebration V 2:59
Celebration VI 4:01
Celebration VII 3:41
Celebration VIII 3:25
Celebration IX 1:35
Celebration X 4:10

Volume 5: Incantations
Incantation I 2:17
Incantation II 1:58
Incantation III 1:36
Incantation IV 2:10
Incantation V 3:14
Incantation VI 1:49
Incantation VII 1:53
Incantation VIII 2:56
Incantation IX 4:28

A Beginner’s Mind began when the two musicians and Asthmatic Kitty labelmates decamped to a friend’s cabin in upstate New York for a monthlong songwriting sabbatical. Watching a movie to unwind after each day’s work, they soon found their songs reflecting the films and began investigating this connection in earnest.

The resulting album is 14 songs (loosely) based on (mostly) popular films—highbrow, lowbrow and everything in between. They wrote in tandem—one person writing a verse, the other a chorus, churning out chord progressions and lyrics willy-nilly, often finishing each other’s sentences in the process. Rigorous editing and rewriting ensued. The results are less a “cinematic exegesis” and more a “rambling philosophical inquiry” that allows the songs to free-associate at will. Plot-points, scene summaries, and leading characters are often displaced by esoteric interpolations that ask the bigger question: what does it mean to be human in a broken world?

Stevens and De Augustine wrote everything with a deliberate sense of shoshin—the Zen Buddhist concept for which the record is named and an idea that empowered the pair to look for and write about unlikely inspiration without preconceived notions of what a film had to say (The I-Ching and Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies also served as incentives along the way). The movies became rhetorical prompts, with the songwriters letting their distinct reactions and creative instincts govern their process. The underlying objective was empathy and openness, absent of judgment: to observe with the eyes of a child.

The album’s artwork comes courtesy of Ghanaian artist Daniel Anum Jasper. In Ghana during the late ’80s, a novel “mobile cinema” culture emerged when enterprising film fans screened Hollywood blockbusters in the backs of pick-up trucks using portable generators. To advertise the movies, artists painted alternate posters inspired only by the scant information they had about each film. Sufjan and Angelo commissioned a pioneer of this form—Jasper—to paint a series of new works for A Beginner’s Mind (including covers for three 7-inch singles). Information about the project was deliberately kept vague so that Mr. Jasper could work without restraint.

Sufjan Stevens is an artist, songwriter and composer living in New York. He has released nine widely lauded studio albums and a number of collaborations with fellow musicians, choreographers and visual artists from the New York City Ballet and the celebrated director Luca Guadagnino to his stepfather Lowell Brams and noted dancer Jalaiah Harmon.

Angelo De Augustine is an artist and songwriter living in Thousand Oaks, California—a suburb north of Los Angeles, where he grew up. He has released three albums including his self-released debut, Spirals of Silence (2014), and two for Asthmatic Kitty Records, Swim Inside The Moon (2017) and Tomb (2019).

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Beautifully combining the distinct voices and instrumental styles of both performers into an intoxicating juxtaposition of folk and tenderly plucked indie balladry. It's haunting in parts, and elsewhere wonderfully melodic, a perfect outing for both performers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reach Out 3:43
2. Lady Macbeth In Chains 3:42
3. Back To Oz 4:25
4. The Pillar Of Souls 4:04
5. You Give Death A Bad Name 5:11
6. Beginner’s Mind 2:36
7. Olympus 3:07
8. Murder And Crime 3:43
9. (This Is) The Thing 3:13
10. It’s Your Own Body And Mind 2:27
11. Lost In The World 3:20
12. Fictional California 3:03
13. Cimmerian Shade 5:01
14. Lacrimae 2:05

TRACK LISTING

1. America (12:30)
2. My Rajneesh (10:29)

Sufjan returns with the long awaited follow up to Carrie & Lowell, featuring some of his most confident and varied work to date. We kick things off with the unassuming beginnings of 'Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse' before launching into a deeply electronic but airy Thom Yorkey vocal workout. It's this sort of rapid switch and thematic flexibility that both characterises the album and leads to the most surprising and satisfying moments of his career. 

'Video Game' sees some haunting organy synth leading into a deeply rythmic and pop-led verse, showcasing Stevens' iconic voice, and dedication to variety in songcraft.  

there are some more ambient moments at play, with 'Die Happy' and 'Gilgamesh' trading on the ambient electronic backdrop, but with long tailed reverbs and soaring echoes working their way around the stereo image. 

Possibly the most satisfying moments on this collection comes as the flow of the album quietens down into the euphoric redux of the latter third of the album. 'Sugar' could easily have been the background to some of the earlier, skittering electronics of Múm or the Rós, while the title track encompasses everything we love about Stevens, but imbued with a mildly melancholic but wholly relaxed atmospherics. 

It's a beautiful LP, and one that only goes to prove how essential Stevens continues to be on our musical landscape. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Javi says: From the opening choral glitches to the sea of ambience which sees the album out, ‘The Ascension’ is a patchwork of electronic experimentation, distorted lamentations, and intimate confession.

Sufjan Stevens has long been a musical chameleon: from the alt-folk expression of ‘Carrie & Lowell’, to the meticulously-researched bombast of ‘Illinois’ and digital catharsis of ‘The Age of Adz’, he’s proven time and time again that whatever the instrumentation or subject matter, he can write rich, personal, spiritual songs like no one else. ‘The Ascension’ draws on all these and more, to create an album as fragile as it is grand, as despairing as it is defiant, and as inspired (if not more so) than anything he’s done before.

‘The Ascension’ is a predominantly electronic affair: huge, distorted drums pulse throughout the album, underscoring hordes of ghostly voices and shifting synths. Celestial car alarm effects argue with auto-tuned vocal cries, while album highlight “Landslide” sees Sufjan bow to a guitar solo, of all things, teetering in-between The Durutti Column’s understated beauty and wild math-rock frenzy. Lyrically, Sufjan seems desperate for a response, making demands and pleading with us, the listener, to soothe his anxieties. Faith and certainty are out; desire and anxiety are in. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the penultimate and titular track, which sees Sufjan explore those thoughts he “couldn’t quite confess” to gut-wrenching effect.

Like Dante’s Inferno reimagined as a tour of purgatory, ‘The Ascension’ is a deeply conflicted, gloriously lost, and tentatively comforting album. It’s Sufjan’s finest hour (and twenty minutes) yet.

TRACK LISTING

1. Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse (5:19)
2. Run Away With Me (4:07)
3. Video Game (4:16)
4. Lamentations (3:42)
5. Tell Me You Love Me (4:22)
6. Die Happy (5:47)
7. Ativan (6:32)
8. Ursa Major (3:43)
9. Landslide (5:04)
10. Gilgamesh (3:50)
11. Death Star (4:04)
12. Goodbye To All That (3:48)
13. Sugar (7:37)
14. The Ascension (5:56)
15. America (12:30)

Aporia is a New Age album from Sufjan Stevens and his step-father and record label co-owner, Lowell Brams. In the spirit of the New Age composers who sanded off the edges of their synths’ sawtooth waves, Aporia approximates a rich soundtrack from an imagined sci-fi epic brimming with moody, hooky, gauzy synthesizer soundscapes. The album may suggest the progeny of a John Carpenter, Wendy Carlos, and Mike Oldfield marriage, but it stands apart from these touchstones and generates a meditative universe all its own. This is no mere curio in the Sufjan Stevens catalog - but a fully realized collaborative musical piece.

TRACK LISTING

` SIDE A

1.Ousia 2:33
2.What It Takes 3:23
3.Disinheritance 1:13
4.Agathon 3:02
5.Determined Outcome 2:12
6.Misology 1:49
7.Afterworld Alliance 2:47
8.Palinodes 0:32
9.Backhanded Cloud 1:26
10.Glorious You 1:49



SIDE B

11.For Raymond Scott 0:34
12.Matronymic 0:57
13.The Red Desert 2:54
14.Conciliation 1:20
15.Ataraxia 1:12
16.The Unlimited 2:14
17.The Runaround 3:35
18.Climb That Mountain 3:00
19.Captain Praxis 2:13
20.Eudaimonia 2:19
21.The Lydian Ring 1:02

Oscar- and Grammy-nominated composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens releases his acclaimed score for Justin Peck’s ballet The Decalogue via his own label, AKR. Performed by the pianist Timo Andres, the recording is the first time the score, premiered during the New York City Ballet’s 2017 season, is available to the public. 

The Decalogue is the third collaboration between NYCB Resident Choreographer Peck and Stevens, following 2012’s Year of the Rabbit and 2014’s Everywhere We Go. The piece was widely praised upon its premiere; The New York Times lauded the “beauty and charm” of Peck’s choreography as well as Stevens’ “romantically modernist études.”

Brooklyn-based composer-pianist Timo Andres is a Nonesuch Records artist, who has written major works for the Boston Symphony, Carnegie Hall, the Barbican, the Takács Quartet, the Concertgebouw, and elsewhere. He performs regularly with Gabriel Kahane, and has frequently appeared with Philip Glass, Becca Stevens, Nadia Sirota, the Kronos Quartet, John Adams, Ted Hearne, and others. As a pianist, Timo has performed at Lincoln Center, for the New York Philharmonic, the LA Phil, at Wigmore Hall, for San Francisco Performances, and at (le) Poisson Rouge. Upcoming highlights include a curated program for the Cincinnati Symphony (featuring Dance Heginbotham and a performance of Andres’s cello concerto, Upstate Obscura), and a solo piano recital for Carnegie Hall. Previous work with Sufjan Stevens includes the orchestration of “Principia” for Justin Peck and the New York City Ballet.

A singer-songwriter currently living in New York, Sufjan Stevens’ preoccupation with epic concepts has motivated two state records (Michigan and Illinois), a collection of sacred and biblical songs (Seven Swans), an electronic album for the animals of the Chinese zodiac (Enjoy Your Rabbit), an expansive EP in homage to the Apocalypse (All Delighted People), a full length partly inspired by the outsider artist Royal Robertson (The Age of Adz) and two Christmas box sets (Songs for Christmas, vol. 1-5 and Silver & Gold, vol. 6-10). BAM has commissioned two works from Stevens, a programmatic tone poem for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (The BQE) and an instrumental accompaniment to slow-motion rodeo footage (Round-Up). Stevens’ Planetarium, a collaborative album with Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner and James McAlister imbued with themes of the cosmos, was released in 2017 to widespread critical praise.

2015’s highly acclaimed Carrie & Lowell explored his relationship with his mother in the wake of her death; a companion collection of outtakes, remixes and demos, The Greatest Gift Mixtape, was released in 2017. The songs “Love Yourself” and “With My Whole Heart” were released in 2018 in celebration of Pride Month, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting the Ali Forney Center in Harlem, NY and the Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit, MI. Stevens also contributed three much-lauded songs to Luca Guadagnino’s critically acclaimed film Call Me By Your Name, including the Oscar-nominated “Mystery of Love.”

TRACK LISTING

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X

As some of you may or may not know, for the past few years, as a holiday tradition, Sufjan has embarked on an extraordinary experiment to record an annual Christmas EP. It started in 2001, the year of Epiphanies, and continued onward (skipping only 2004), culminating into an odd and idiosyncratic catalog of music that has only existed in the Asthmatic Kitty archives (and on a number of file sharing sites). The recording process took place every December, for one week, usually at home, provoking collaborations with friends, roommates, and musical peers. Armed with a Reader's Digest Christmas Songbook (and a mug of hot cider) Sufjan & friends concocted a musical fruit cake year after year, implementing every musical instrument they could find lying around the house: banjo, oboe, Casiotone, wood flute, a buzzy guitar, hand claps, sleigh bells, Hammond organ, and some tree tinsel. Did we mention sleigh bells? It doesn't take much to capture that Creepy Christmas Feeling, does it? Recorded, mixed and mastered at home, the EPs themselves were often assembled in the kitchen, stapled together, and sent out with stickers and stamps to loved ones across the globe, year after year. Recording traditional favourites alongside unique originals, Sufjan has, over the course of five years, constructed an odd, impressive, and compelling collection of Christmas hits (and some misses) that will either warm your heart or make you throw up eggnog all over the bath mat (depending on your constitution). Asthmatic Kitty now releases ALL of the material (newly mixed and mastered) in one generous box set.

TRACK LISTING

Silent Night
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
We’re Goin’ To The Country
Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming
It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad!
Holy, Holy, Holy
Amazing Grace
Angels We Have Heard
Put The Lights On The Tree
Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing
I Saw Three Ships
Only At Christmas Time
Once In Royal David’s City
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!
What Child Is This Anyway?
Bring A Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Come On! Let’s Boogey To The Elf Dance!
We Three Kings
O Holy Night
That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!
Ding! Dong!
All The King’s Horns
The Friendly Beasts
The Little Drummer Boy
Away In A Manger
Hey Guys! It’s Christmas Time!
The First Noel
Did I Make You Cry On Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!)
The Incarnation
Joy To The World
Once In Royal David’s City
Get Behind Me, Santa!
Jingle Bells
Christmas In July
Lo! How A Rose E’er Blooming
Jupiter Winter
Sister Winter
O Come O Come Emmanuel
Star Of Wonder
Holy, Holy, Holy
The Winter Solstice

Flanked by a string quartet and a consort of seven trombones, this unique collaborative ensemble have assembled an expansive song cycle that explores the Sun, the Moon, the planets and other celestial bodies of our solar system (and beyond) through soundscape, song, science and myth.

The subject of the album is not just the wilderness of outer space, but also the interior space of human consciousness and how it engages with divinity, depravity, society and self - what does it mean to be human?

A musical and aesthetic journey as far-reaching as its subject: from lush piano ballads to prog-rock political anthems, curious electronic backbeats to classical cadenzas, which occasionally give way to ambient interludes and majestic brass chorales, buttressed by a percussive drive that keeps the momentum skyward.

In spite of all the experimentation in sound and style, Sufjan’s vocals provide a clear and coherent centre of gravity, and includes some of his most diverse vocal performances to date (from soft hush to guttural scream); whether he’s singing through effects pedals, vocoders, auto-tune or not, his voice delivers an ambitious flight map through the cosmos.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Conceptually intimidating but perfectly executed suite of space themed pieces, bold and tender in equal measure, beautifully composed and impeccably performed by a superbly talented bunch of some of the best musicians of modern times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Neptune
2. Jupiter
3. Halley's Comet
4. Venus
5. Uranus
6. Mars
7. Black Energy
8. Sun
9. Tides
10. Moon
11. Pluto
12. Kuiper Belt
13. Black Hole
14. Saturn
15. In The Beginning
16. Earth
17. Mercury

Carrie & Lowell, the new album from Sufjan Stevens, is released on Stevens’ own Asthmatic Kitty Records. 

The album - named for Stevens’ mother and stepfather - is a return to Stevens’ folk roots. Thematically the 11 songs address life and death, love and loss, and the artist’s struggle to make sense of the beauty and ugliness of love.

Carrie & Lowell was recorded by Stevens alongside Casey Foubert, Laura Veirs, Nedelle Torrisi, Sean Carey, Ben Lester and Thomas Bartlett and mixed by Stevens, Bartlett and Pat Dillet.

TRACK LISTING

1. Death With Dignity
2. Should Have Known Better
3. All Of Me Wants All Of You
4. Drawn To The Blood
5. Eugene
6. Fourth Of July
7. The Only Thing
8. Carrie & Lowell
9. John My Beloved
10. No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross
11. Blue Bucket Of Gold

Who can save us from the infidels of Christmas commodity? Look no further, tired shopper, for your hero arrives as the diligent songwriter Sufjan Stevens, army of one, banjo in one hand, drum machine in the other, holed up in his room, surrounded by hymnals, oratorios, music charts, sacred harp books, paperclipped-photo-copied Readers Digest Christmas catalogs, singing his barbaric yawp above the snow-capped rooftops.

This deluxe 5CD boxset includes 5 CD EPs (‘Gloria’, ‘I Am Santa’s Helper’, ‘Christmas Infinity Voyage’, ‘Let It Snow’ and ‘Christmas Unicorn’), 2. Christmas stickers, temporary tattoos (non-toxic & safe for children), a paper ornament (self-assembly with directions), an apocalyptic pull-out poster, song lyrics and chord charts, hallucinogenic photographs and psychedelic graphic design (by Sufjan Stevens) and extensive liner notes (essays by Sufjan Stevens and Pastor Vito Aiuto).

"The Age Of Adz" (pronounced Odds) is Sufjan Stevens’ first full-length collection of original songs since 2005’s conceptual pop opus "Illinois".

This new album is probably his most unusual, first, for its lack of conceptual underpinnings, and second, for its extensive use of electronics. The album almost entirely eschews the songwriter’s former tools of the trade - acoustic instruments that accompany an expansive narrative scope.

While the sounds on this record are distinctly “artificial” (drum machines and analogue synthesizers reign supreme), the proclamations of the songs are unabashedly visceral, sung loudly, with a backdrop of insistent orchestration.

The result is an album that is perhaps more vibrant, more primary, and more explicit than anything Sufjan has done before, incorporating themes that are neither historical nor civic, but rather personal and primal (if even a little juvenile). Love, sex, death, disease, illness, anxiety, and suicide make appearances in an aggressive (and sometimes danceable) tapestry of electronic pop, conveyed with the urgency, immediacy, and anxiety of primary colours.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: No overall theme on this album but it's mainly concerned with love and loss. Subtle electronics take centre stage proving to be a perfect foil for his slightly mournful vocals, and giving the overall sound a spacey cosmic feel. This is Sufjan at his supreme best!

Sufjan's last album, "Illinois" was originally conceived as a double album, culminating in a musical collage of nearly 50 songs. But as the project began to develop into an unwieldy epic, common sense weighed in – as did the opinions of others – and the project was cut in half. But as 2005 came to a close, Sufjan returned to the old, forsaken songs on his 8-track like a grandfather remembering his youth. Sufjan gleaned 21 useable tracks from the abandoned material, including three alternate versions of "Chicago". Some songs were in finished form, others were merely outlines, gesture drawings, or musical scribbles mumbled on a hand-held tape recorder. Most of the material required substantial editing, new arrangements or vocals. Much of the work was done at the end of 2005 or in January the following year. Sufjan invited many of the original Illinoisemakers to fill in the edges: drums, trumpet, a choir of singers. The centrepiece, of course, was the title track – "The Avalanche" – a song intended for the leading role on the "Illinois" album but eventually cut and placed as a bonus track on the vinyl release.

TRACK LISTING

The Avalanche
Super Computer
Adlai
Vivian
Chicago Acoustic
Henney Buggy
Saul Bellow
Carlyle
Springfield
Mistress
Kaskaskia River
Chicago AC
Inaugural Music
Your Land
Tornado
Pick Up
Perpetual Self
Pluto
Chicago OCD
Pittsfield
Undivided Self

THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2004

This is wonderful! Sufjan has created another stunning album, by blending pastoral folk songs, with a whole host of unusual instrumentation, including electric piano, xylophone and glockenspiel that at times are reminiscent of Philip Glass, occasional bursts of frantic but melodic banjo, and various brass and woodwind instruments and the whole thing is held together through out by some stunningly simple acoustic guitar and fragile, half whispered vocals.

Sufjan's homage to his home state is a beautiful mix of Stereolab meets Philip Glass meets indie-folk - a delicate vocal with intricate instrumentation. 

Although he plays all the instruments on the album himself, he enlists the help of fellow Danielson Famile members  Megan, Elin, and Daniel Smith on vocal duties.

TRACK LISTING

Flint (For The Unemployed And Underpaid)
All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!
For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti
Say Yes! To M!ch!gan!
The Upper Peninsula
Tahquamenon Falls
Holland
Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)
Romulus
Alanson, Crooked River
Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie
They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black (For The Homeless In Muskegon)
Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)
Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)
Vito’s Ordination Song