Time is Away – Ballads All Night Flight Records

Label: A Colourful Storm – ACOLOUR041
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Compilation
Country: Australia
Released: Oct 2022
Genre: Electronic, Classical, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Ambient, Folk

Long awaited and highly anticipated debut compilation from two of our favourite people – Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney, who have spent close to ten years establishing themselves as genuinely unique musical storytellers under their joint @timeisaway alias. Across various formats and projects, predominately their cherished monthly NTS show, site-specific soundworks, research projects or more recently mixtapes, Jack and Elaine combine deep musical excavation talents and a research-centric approach to create a dialogue between music together with themes of memory, transience, place and time. Ballads has grown out of the 2021 mixtape of the same name and is a collection of unique songs that exist outside of genre, yet in the spirit of expert curation and context all make sense within the company of each other. It’s music outside of time – romantic, poetic, nostalgic, familiar and foreign, though always unique – from Antonietta Borgoli’s haunting acapella to the spell-binding vocal ritual of Swiss jazz group Tanto Pressanto and the arrestingly beautiful acoustic poetry of Yuko Kono it’s clear we’re in the presence of something truly special. The isolated piano keys of outsider Russian pianist Rachel Bonch-Bruevich are delicately sequenced next to the ghostly minimalist nighttime folk of Merula’s ‘Dags Att Sova’ whilst the dewy-eyed love-sick melancholy of Hydroplane’s closer shows a level of sensitivity that’s always totally absent from the very hit & miss compilation format. I can’t be alone in thinking that the concept of ‘digging’ for rare / obscure / expensive records is totally done here in 2022 – anyone with an itch and understanding of the discogs search engine can have it all at their fingertips. But it takes unique talents to contextualise music and create new meaning out of elements totally unrelated to each other. Ballads does that better than anything we’ve encountered so far.. (mint / new)

Tracklist
A1 Horvitz Morris Previte Trio– Todos Santos
A2 Christina Petrie– Ballads
A3 Christmas Decorations– Broken Leg Hours
A4 Gilles Chabenat and Frédéric Paris– De L’Eau Et Des Amandes
B1 Antonietta Borgoli– Dindindino Dindindalo
B2 Tanto Pressanto– I Mues Immer A Di Tänke
B3 Yuko Kono– Triangle
B4 The Unthanks– Waiting
C1 David Lang– Just (After Song Of Songs)
C2 Rachel Bonch-Bruevich*– Untitled (DDR 1972)
D1 Merula– Dags Att Sova
D2 Stella Vander– Ondes
D3 Hydroplane– The Love You Bring