Remember in grade school when you’d go to a museum for a day, and then you’d have to write a poem about a painting, or a song about a mosaic, or whatever? Well, now underground legends Loren Connors and Suzanne Langille are taking a field trip and releasing an LP based on the paintings of Brooklyn outsider artist M P Landis for Northern Spy Records. Connors has released over 50 albums at this point, and has work archived in the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi. Langille, his life partner, is a vocalist who has appeared on a number of Connors’ best albums through the years — more on that here — and her own debut album (with Neel Mugari) Wild & Foolish Heart was finally released in 2010.
This newest project, called I Wish I Didn’t Dream, came about through Connor’s association with writer and WFMU DJ Kurt Gottschalk, who was writing text and choosing paintings for a book on Landis. Connors and Gottschalk were like, “Hey, what if this book had a soundtrack?” And magic happened! An album concept was born! (Also check out our Cerberus write-up of the accompanying 7-inch.)
The birth of said album occurred in Jason LaFarge’s Seizure’s Palace studio, where Swans recorded My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky and Brian Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land was engineered and mixed. Connors and Langille watched slides of Landis paintings flash on the wall and then improvised until this, their first album as a duo in 14 years, sprung to life.
To celebrate, Northern Spy is throwing a party at Brooklyn’s 285 Kent on November 13, with sets by the Lee Ranaldo/Alan Licht/Ryan Sawyer trio, the Tom Carter/Pat Murano duo, projections by Martha Colburn, and of course, Loren Connors and Suzanne Langille.
I Wish I Didn’t Dream tracklisting:
01. My Skin Is a Membrane
02. La Belle Dame sans Merci
03. Come with Me
04. Come On, Come On
05. Shenandoah
06. Just Find Your Shoes
07. I Wish I Didn’t Dream
08. I Don’t Know
09. Gotta Work
10. Still Bound
11. It Will Only Continue
12. Cease to Do Evil
13. Keep Breathing
• Loren Connors: http://www.fvrec.com/lorenconnors
• Suzanne Langille: http://family-vineyard.com/artists/suzannelangille.php
• M P Landis: http://www.mplandis.com
• Northern Spy: http://northern-spy.com