After losing his wife to cystic fibrosis, producer David Gledhill decided to work through his grief by undertaking a mammoth musical experiment. The result was Release, 11 tracks that unearth vocals from the American South circa 1920/30, and brings them, carefully, delicately, to our world nearly 100 years later.
Gledhill had the idea after discovering the catalogue of storied folklorist Alan Lomax, who recorded scores of unknowns – field hands, people in church, schoolchildren, prisoners. After his wife passed away, Gledhill felt a deep connection to these voices, singers that weren’t trying to win a spot on X Factor or sell a million records; voices that were singing because they needed to.
Over the course of 18 months, Gledhill became SOULS, seeking out his own rare vocal recordings, cleaning and editing them to create Release. An astounding body of work that pairs truly heart-stopping voices with contemporary compositions, Release seeks to compliment and enhance – rather than outshine or disrupt – those voices from one hundred years ago.
Exclusive: SOULS – I Go On
The second track to be released from the project is for I Go On, featuring a singer called Jimmy Strother. Recorded in Virginia in 1936, Strother was in prison, at the time, for murdering his wife. “This is very spiritual, about never giving up – which is sort of the overall theme, or an explanation of why the record exists,” David tells i-D. “It was one of the later tracks I did. After I’d finished Another Man Done GoneI made a conscious decision that I wasn’t going to get boxed in by genres, and I’d let myself do whatever the songs needed. This felt like it would work as an almost early 90s kind of breakbeat rave anthem. I don’t know why, but that’s what was going on in my head.”
I Go On is accompanied by a video directed by Jonathan Augustavo, shot in New Mexico. “The sound has a certain sense of inherent inertia and spirituality. And, you know, with New Mexico being the land of enchantment…. Putting those ideas together, the visuals we created, painted a vision of Americana that is spiritual, hopeful, whimsical… and certainly going places.”
Press play and soak in the sounds of the now and then, from a project whose timing seems particularly perfect in 2016.
Credits
Text Hattie Collins