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Their Arms Surround Me Like Chains Made of Velvet

by J. Carter

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  • 'A Sanguine Bond' T-Shirt
    T-Shirt/Apparel

    High quality Screen print on 100% Climate Neutral Organic Cotton

    Available in M only (Loose fit, see images for details)

    Originally made available during the Vaagner showcase at 7 Star Gallery in Berlin, 7.3.19.

    Edition of 50

    Artwork by O.R

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  • Their Arms Surround Me Like Chains Made of Velvet (Special edition CS)
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Special Edition comes housed in a wallet case and printed J-Card

    Includes Insert with repurposed artwork by Jeremiah Carter

    VAKNAR 12

    Edition of 30

    Artwork by O.R

    Includes unlimited streaming of Their Arms Surround Me Like Chains Made of Velvet via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • Their Arms Surround Me Like Chains Made of Velvet (CS)
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Cassettes come housed in printed J-Cards

    VAKNAR 12

    Edition of 60

    Artwork by O.R

    Includes unlimited streaming of Their Arms Surround Me Like Chains Made of Velvet via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

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about

By reflecting on political discourse, humanity, love and passion, J. Carter lays bare an album that feels ardently personal, vulnerable and sincere.

Drawing from various sources of inspiration that range from Japanese chamber music to spoken word, noise and folk, the album presents
itself as an introspective journey through cultural and musical topographies that unfold vividly throughout the duration of the work.


Ears To Feed Review:

"If ever there could be a soundtrack to self-reflection, may it be Their Arms Surround Me Like Chains Made Of Velvet, the new album from J. Carter, out now via Vaknar Records. The Brooklyn-based experimentalist seems to specialize in stirring that which lies deepest within consciousness and sensibility, and the work on this album does so in ways that are both devastating and transformative. An unknowable history is brought forth like Proust’s madeleines, through instrumentation that is at once archaic and wholly new—not quite an acoustic guitar, but rather its memory, obscured by the ruination of adult living.

Such aching nostalgia whirrs past your head on opening track, “Introductory Discourse (Placing My Ailments Aside),” like jumpscares in a horror movie, the feelings of longing set to ambush at any and every turn. Spoken word, set against glowing ambience on “Contour Defined by Defenses (Apropos of the City),” elicit a reckoning between self and past selves, past relationships, past decisions. Synthesizer notes glide along linear passageways that could go on forever and offer a chance for the return of a happiness once concrete, but, as everything will, they fleet and dusk and sunken reality sets back in, grounded entirely in the melancholia of “Interpolation of Lust (Hands Outline Intent).

The least effected guitar samples on the album sound like a saddened troubadour playing in the corner of the abandoned bar in which you sit and ruminate. It converses with synthesizer notes prodding in the dark, echoing the Japanese exchange that plays over and through it. And everything comes to a head on closer “The Ropes Become Water As We Roll Together Towards Dawn,” with evident vocal cries submerged in glistening organ sounds that stretch on forever like buzzing glows of regret. It’s a most empathetic end to a most empathetic album. Carter sees his own humanity, and yours in these notions of nostalgia, and he writes it, hoping for at least a postcard in return, which is easily obliged by our attention given to this album, and our supervision of our feelings for its duration."

- Jp Basileo



The Wire Review:

The Berlin based Vaknar label has released ten albums since its inception at the beginning of 2018. Much like the artists it supports, this subsidiary of the Vaagner imprint is couched in an intentional anonymity. It gives little away in terms of its identity beyond the signature monochrome cover art of its records and a commitment to putting out a certain neo-ambient sound that’s been cropping up around the more experimental edges of techno.

J Carter (aka Jeremiah Carter) is unique to the Vaknar catalogue in being based outside of traditional global ambient networks. A Nashville, Tennessee native who only relocated to New York last
year, Carter’s approach to what he calls “environmental music” is replete with the pathos and melancholy of the country and folk music he grew up with.

Their Arms Surround Me Like Chains Made Of Velvet is shadowed by a currently unreleased supplementary mix of musical influences that are superficially distinct from Carter’s gauzy electronic production. Yet somehow the power pop of Alex Chilton’s Big Star and the bittersweet Americana of John Prine’s “Summer’s End” bleed into the living, breathing organism that makes up the LP proper. The sound swells into a mnemonic landscape that’s scattered with familiar acoustic signifiers – a muted, picked string instrument on the title track or a lonely strummed guitar chord on “Concluding Silence (Hands Made of Heaven)”.

Carter’s track titles read like book chapters, while the elements of his
music – a piano, an organ, a violin – are melted down and dissolve into the rich atmospherics of a sonic architecture that is dreamlike in its lucid simplicity.

-Steph

credits

released April 8, 2019

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VAAGNER Berlin, Germany

Vaagner/Vaknar
Est. 2018

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