FOR RELEASE 09.11.09KILLCROW001/BRAIN-GEL006
North Sea Navigator’s nightmarish, elegiac collage Among The Dead City pieces together the soundtracks of lives half-heard from the other side of the wallThis incredibly detailed record crafted over two years is an arresting mix of hauntingly beautiful acoustic songs, darkly atmospheric instrumentals and found fragments of audio, all seen through the death mask of a Soviet satellite state.
When the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, panicked Stasi agents spent three months covertly shredding 45 million documents that detailed the lives of the six million people they spied on. When the shredding machines broke down under the weight of the task, agents had to resort to doing it manually.
Puzzle Women tells the story of a team of 30 workers who have been painstakingly piecing together an average of 10 documents a day since 1991, using tape and tweezers, to stitch back the fragments of lost lives.
Two Bristol musicians,
Paul Nash (
North Sea Navigator) and
Neil Johnson (
Angel Tech), were inspired to capture the terror of administration and the insidious spectre of surveillance on record. The result of this collaboration, which chillingly heralds the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, is an uncompromising soundscape of dark NSN drone and brittle Angel Tech glitch, at once bleak but as beautiful in its widescreen scope perhaps as Berlin-era Bowie.
It is difficult to pin down the sound of
Among The Dead City. If you defined this album as drone, concrete, electro-acoustic, folk or soundtrack, you’d be missing its unique essence. The two acoustic guitars and voices of Nash and Johnson are only one half of a compelling story that pieces together the soundtracks of lives half-heard from the other side of the wall. Turn out the lights, close your eyes and be very afraid.
Gigs: NSN will be playing St George’s Bristol as part of the Bristol Acoustic Music Festival 2010 on Saturday 16 January and will be announcing other live dates in 2010 shortly.
Paul Nash gravitated to Bristol in 2003 to join WARP-signing Gravenhurst and to form North Sea Navigator. Leaving Gravenhurst to concentrate on his own project, Nash expanded NSN to a live 3-piece with Charlotte Nicholls (Crippled Black Phoenix) and Tim Atack (Angel Tech), subsequently self-releasing
Alibis EP and “stunning debut album” (Rock Sound)
Make The Blacklist. Expanding to a live 4-piece with Johnson, NSN has toured with Rose Kemp. Nash has since collaborated with Kemp on the track
Edward (Silber Records). Currently in production is the third NSN album,
Lights In Darkest England, which was recorded as a 4-piece band and is set for a release on
Kill Crow later in 2010.
www.northseanavigator.co.uk
www.myspace.com/northseanavigator
www.killcrow.com
www.brain-gel.com