Gardenia

J Colleran

SKU: BEC5543490

Barcode: 05060525434907

17.00 £17.00

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J Colleran’s majestic lead single ‘bERA’ began as a simple experiment using pianos and arpeggiators that slowly developed into a shimmering elemental piece. The coinciding video, directed by Gray was inspired by the photography series by Anton Polyakov who documented the people of Transnistria, an independent state affected by the constant intimidation of military conflict.

The film shows the slow shifting balance of power from physical force to the over bearing emptiness of a room. Gray describes the featured bodybuilder flexing to a visible lack of audience as “a shimmering golden symbol of power and also a fragile vessel shaped around a trauma. The presence of a long gaze and the rapid deterioration of strength reveals a true identity.”

Recent quick-fire single ‘O+SOH’ served as a transitional primer for the Irish producer and classical pianist, forming the perfect base from which to launch ‘Gardenia’ — a sweeping experimental soundscape inspired by childhood memories and the natural beauty of his native Ireland.

Recorded at The Meadow Studios in Wicklow, the album’s neo-classical direction takes much of its inspiration from Colleran’s home in The Curragh Plains, Kildare. Avoiding stasis, these influences were instead rolled outwards from the ancient plains as he began to write music for fictional, non-existing spaces and worlds of his own making. Living within these transcendent works, the bones of his influences shimmer brightly right across the record, as strings and piano melodies blossom, reflecting the beauty of the flora and fauna of the grasslands.

From sparkling opener ‘Sun Line’ to first single ‘bERA’, Colleran uproots warm, organic sounds and recontextualizes them within colder, metallic spaces — a theme most paramount in ‘Freesia i’ and ‘Freesia ii’ — before signing off with the raw and powerful emotion of final ballad, ‘Granu’, a track written and recorded with a live string quartet.

“Throughout the record, I wanted to ensure that when it felt overly organic I immediately counteracted this with something digital or synthesized working alongside it”, Colleran explains.

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Track Listings

Side A
1. Sun Line
2. Bera
3. Fressia i
4. Joye 1:12

Side B
1. And The Sky Cracked For The First Time
2. Fresia ii
3. Popypia
4. Granu

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