If you're going to name an album 'Vigils', then you need to back it up.
It's not a word to be plucked lightly from the ether, to be hacked out of the dictionary and placed upon a record sleeve.
But then, Richard J. Birkin isn't a talent to be taken lightly, either. An artist of real depth, fragility, and power, his new album 'Vigils' arrives on March 11th via Reveal.
It's a truly beautiful return. Clash has obtained an up front stream, along with an introduction from Richard J. Birkin:
Significant human evolution is not fast and loud but slow and quiet. So slow that you almost don’t notice it happening. Except when you look back and see changes after they’ve happened… that’s when you see the giant leaps.
The brief I gave to Aaron Bradbury (album art creator and Head of CGI at the National Space Centre) was to create a sculpture, within a dusty space, lit only by moonbeams. The sculpture would be of the moment of a singularity – the split second origin of a giant leap, frozen in time, as if part of Miss Favisham’s world.
The album is a soundtrack to the idea of looking back at our present from somewhere in the future, after one such giant leap, where things are different than they are now. Where perhaps all rooms are dusty and frozen in time. Where you can see the discreet moments that quietly coalesced into something momentous. Where you feel like a visitor… like you’re the one haunting the room.
Catch Richard J. Birkin at the following shows:
March
19 Milton Keynes MK Gallery w/ Kemper Norton
20 Bishops Castle, Shrewsbury The Bankhouse
22 London The Good Ship
24 Middlesborough Spooker Records w/ Old Muggins and Liam Sanders
25 Bradford Fuse Art Space
