The Dublin musician John Lambert has announced a new Chequerboard album.
Souvenir will be released on March 8th, with a launch gig on Saturday March 9th at the Pepper Canister Church, accompanied by Barry O’Halpin on guitar and both Lioba Petrie and Mary Barnecutt on cellos.
“With this album I wanted to create a mosaic of pieces with disparate origins as opposed to a straight journey from a to z. Its influences are extremely varied from Sufjan Stephens to Cocteau Twins, Vangelis to Nick Drake and many others. It was recorded on and off over a 5 year period with producer Stephen Shannon and is the product of many conversations about the idiosyncratic nature of certain pieces of music and what makes them what they are. One such discussion was about how music can act as a souvenir of a period of time in one’s life”
The album is Lambert’s fourth as Chequerboard has further influences from the post-punk dream pop of the Durutti Column to Steve Reich, as heard on the pre-release song ‘Vermillion’, which was inspired by a trip on the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto featuring field recordings from the journey:
The album features painting by Robert Carr who says:
“The music has a beautiful, uplifting atmosphere, so red felt fitting as a colour to house the album. The image on the cover was made with a black ink brush stroke. The colour was added later, with time spent pairing back and refining variations for the final image.”
Album vinyl Pre-order vinyl via Bandcamp.
Tickets for Pepper Canister Church on March 9th here.
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
