Seasonal Sevens – Winter (7″)
Autumn Ferment Records 2010
[tags: acoustic, folk, 7'', 2010]
Listen while reading:
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Here we go again with the Winter edition of the Seasonal Sevens, a 7” vinyl single series released through Autumn Ferment Records featuring one season of the year each. If you want to learn more, check out my posts about the Summer and Autumn issue.
To get things started, I want to tell you a little sad story. It’s about a young man who walks through a deep wood and loses his way. He doesn’t know where he is and finally the bitter cold gets a hold of him. It forces him to lie down because all the strength left his body as he tried to fight against total exhaustion and death from exposure. But the frosty ground isn’t the last thing he feels because before he dies, wild creatures attack his body and eat him alive, piece by piece. He can’t do anything but to give in to his fortune and so the creatures feast on him until nothing is left. Meanwhile his worried mother leaves with a search party and finally finds the body of her dead son after having trouble recognizing the white bones beneath the fresh white snow. End of the story. This sounds scary and it seems a horrible thing in reality. Why have I told you this? Easy, this is what Dusty Stray tells us, but he really got his own style of interpretation, because from the first notes on you will realize that it is a cheerful country influenced sing-along you hear. A good portion irony, minimal percussions, slide guitar, banjo and acoustic guitar transform side A of the vinyl into an first class earworm – listen on repeat at own risk.
Flake Brown and Dusty Stray
This brings me to the flipside: Flake Brown – Cool Is The Snow. Very different in character and style this song marks the more serious part of the release. It was taken from Flake Brown’s full length Help The Overdog with which I never got really warm, I have to admit. But all the better that the good folks over at Autumn Ferment picked this great track. Finger picked acoustic guitar, played really fast, is what your ears will get. The fast played sequence of notes reminds me of falling snowflakes and the higher tones symbolize the glistering sunlight breaking through the fuzzy white wall sometimes. A very nice atmosphere Flake Brown created here that’s perfectly supported by his depressed sounding and capriciously intonated voice. A really nice combination that makes Cool Is The Snow an appropriate addition to Dusty Stray’s song.
Overall I really like the winter edition even though Dusty Stray’s music doesn’t really sound wintery (besides the lyrics). But I can forgive this, because it truly is a nice interpretation of a dark story and Flake Brown’s song works well as a padding preventing the release from drifting too much to the comic side. If you are a fan of the Seasonal Sevens, this is a must buy for you. And if you don’t know the series, it also is – not because the tracks are all new (what is not the case), but because the idea of a series of 7”s dedicated to the four seasons is really nice and because you can feel the love AFR put into those releases. They pick out great songs, press them on colored vinyl and present them in a very nice context for a reasonable price. This is how record collecting makes fun and is meant to be. To get one of the 300 snow white colored vinyls, head over to Autumn Ferment Records and buy the Winter edition as long as supplies last. Also pick up copies of the other two issues if you don’t already own them.
