{"title":"Susannah Stark","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"minor-gestures","title":"Minor Gestures","description":"\u003cp\u003eDrifting in on a stream of birdsong, synths and field recordings of rivers, Susannah Stark posits questions from the outset of \u003cem\u003eMinor Gestures\u003c\/em\u003e, her second studio album. Sung in both Gàidhlig and English, Stark is in constant dialogue with her surroundings, with\u003cbr\u003ehistory, mythology and with the listener on her second album for cult label Stroom of Brussels and Glasgow’s Night School.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRecorded with an ensemble curated from the worlds of experimental and folkloric music in her adopted city, \u003cem\u003eMinor Gestures\u003c\/em\u003e is an omni-directional conversation, open-ended and infused with curiosity and sensitivity. Using primarily acoustic instruments and folk modalities, the songs here display an almost preternatural confidence as Stark shifts perspectives and narratives throughout. Minor Gestures is a body of work that celebrates standing in vulnerability and cultivating resistance to the onset of the corporatisation\u003cbr\u003e of daily life. Stark’s duo-linguistic approach feels like a love letter both to the Gàidhlig language and term for translation: eadar-theangachadh, 'inter-tonguing' itself as a creative act. Much of the album was composed from visual cues, and experimenting with the fundamentals of existing in bodies, in this time and place: breath, drone, whisper, song, and primal rhythms inhabiting the unknown space of the mouth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese practices suffuse \u003cem\u003eMinor Gestures\u003c\/em\u003e with a physicality and immediacy that feel akin to practice of zen meditation: in an age of constant distraction and speed, perhaps truly living, with all its corporeality and massiveness is a form of resistance?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA leap forward from the more electronic and solitary practice of her previous album \u003cem\u003eTime Together, Minor Gestures \u003c\/em\u003efeatures collaborators Phil Cardwell, Caroline Hussey, and seasoned percussionist Laurie Pitt, who's combination of abstraction and intuitive\u003cbr\u003erhythm provides a tactility to the music. Joining the ensemble more recently, Hussey’s accordion is the thread that ties the album together, offering expansive pitch bending notes and drones which the other musicians play off. “Which way does a river go?” Stark\u003cbr\u003easks on opener Caochan, directly addressing the water, which itself responds in Gàidhlig. On Ceistean gun freagairtean, Stark’s voice sits above soft-blown trumpet and accordion drones, asking questions that explicitly require no answers. Instead, the questions\u003cbr\u003eare used as linguistic signposts of the myriad perspectives contained in the song: people wracked with existential dread, the singer’s conversation with a dead lover from a Pictish cave burial.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Night School","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":53322812916043,"sku":"R4522-8488","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/c8b9a18c-c532-12d2-42d6-47b453cfebfd.jpg?v=1757082106"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/susannah-stark.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}