Lilium: Short Stories - Hilfe
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Lilium - Short Stories

Cover von Short Stories
Lilium
Short Stories

Label Glitterhouse Records
Erstveröffentlichung 01.05.2003
Format CD
Lieferzeit 1 – 3 Werktage
Preis 6,75 € (inkl. MwSt. zzgl. Versand)
Rezension

Ein weiteres Mal heisst es: Umdenken. Waren die vielschichtigen, experimentierfreudigen Instrumental-Ausflüge des Lilium-Debuts eine Überraschung für den 16 Horsepower-Hörer, so ist das 2003er Album eine echte Song-Kollektion geworden, deren Wert und Tiefe man von Hören zu Wiederhören mehr zu schätzen weiss. Für die Kurzgeschichten holte sich Pascal Humbert Jean-Yves Tola als festen Partner ins Lilium-Boot und vervollständigte so Rückgrat und Herz von 16 Horsepower. Die beiden liefern die kompositorische und auf Gitarre, Bass, Keyboards, Percussion, Melodica die instrumentale Grundlage der 7 Songs und 3 Instrumentals, die sich alle im weiten Americana-Feld abspielen, aber durch ihre komprimierte Vielfalt erst zeigen, wie weit dieses Feld eigentlich zu bestellen ist. Der besondere Kunstgriff dieser Kollektion aber ist die Auswahl von 6 Gastvokalisten, die alle auch – zumindest für die textliche Seite – der von ihnen gesungenen Stücke verantwortlich waren. Noch überraschender aber die Weise, in welcher dieses Experiment aufgeht: 6 verschiedene Sänger, von denen jeder genug Charakter/Charisma und eigene musikalische Persönlichkeit mitbringt, um dem jeweiligen Song den eigenen Stempel aufzudrücken und doch fliesst Short Stories wie ein großer, in Melancholie und Mystik strahlender Fluss.
Daniel McMahon (Woven Hand), der einmal auch im Duett mit sich singt, klingt bei Locked In Tight und Sense & Grief derart nach dem 16-HP-Mutterschiff, das es freut und schmerzt; David Eugene Edwards selbst leiht Whitewashed seine ergreifende Stimme. In Lover lässt Jim Kalins Bottleneck-Gitarre die Dust Bowl-Luft zittern und flimmern, seine Stimme trägt die trockene Atmosphäre auf der Zunge. Mit The Trap singt sich John Grant zu tragischer Höhen und beschert dem Langzeit-Freund eins der schönsten Czars-Stücke seit langem. Wenn auch nicht singend, so doch mit einem nahezu mystisch-magisch beladenen Saxophon prädestiniert Dana Colley das Instrumental Cavalcade (mit Billy Conway/Morphine an den Drums) zur Nummer 1 auf der Wunschliste für den nächsten Buddy & The Huddle-Soundtrack und in gleich zwei Liedern, einmal unterstützt von Tom Barman (dEUS), schleicht sich brüchig-verletzlich die Sängerin Kal Cahoone ins Ohr, weit davon entfernt, sich einzuschmeicheln, eher als unwiderstehliches Naturereignis. Mit dem instrumentalen Ausklang Angels trägt uns Jean-Yves Tola Keyboard-reich in fast schon Pink Floyd’sche Sphären und Weiten.
Wie kaum eine andere Platte der letzten Zeit nötigte mich Short Stories, wieder und wieder von vorn zu beginnen. Und ich wurde immer wieder dafür belohnt. (cpa)
„Wie desolat wirkt bereits der erste Song: If They Cheered wird von Kal Cahoone gesungen, die gebrochen wie Chan Marshall von Cat Power klingt. Jean-Yves Tola und Pascal Humbert sind zwei Drittel der manischen Wüstenslowrocker 16 Horsepower. Ihr eigenes Projekt, ohne den Sänger David Eugene Edwards, heißt Lilium und ist deutlich reduzierter und ringt weniger mit den Abgründen des Lebens. Edwards wird denn aber auch doch auf Whitewashed and Mikrofon gelassen, einem ergreifend pathetischen Stück. Gäste gibt es auf Short Stories sowieso eine Menge, weshalb Lilium mit diesem Zweitling keinesfalls als Duo bezeichnet werden können. Mitglieder von Edwards eigenem Projekt Woven Hand, von den Belgiern Deus, den mittlerweile nicht mehr existierenden Morphine und Czars unterstützen Lilium, lassen die zehn Lieder zu einem intensiven Lagerfeuer-Album für älter Werdende reifen, die lernen, mit Untiefen umzugehen. Puh, Howe Gelb, Nick Cave und Will Oldham bekommen Konkurrenz!“ (Frankfurter Rundschau. 4/5)

Review

Lilium’s Short stories brings us pure art as it is represented by musical expression. Jean-Yves Tola, Pascal Humbert and some of their most talented friends have put together a potent cocktail of words and sounds unlike any of their previous combined efforts. Ideals that they themselves embrace as artists are given life through the marriage of their music with the words of their collaborators. In this they are set free to present a work that is far more pure and un-compromised than they had previously been able to do.

Though art is the external expression of the artist we are compelled to internalize it, giving it a virgin perspective as we apply our own interpretations independent of the intended meaning. We are shown not just the building but are invited to peek into the windows as well. Sometimes it is difficult or uncomfortable to comprehend what we see. Some of us feel it is easier not to look in the window at all. Content with the figure, we dispense with the form. We choose to dwell in shallower waters, gaze at sunny vistas that we might do and feel as the rest. We fear to indulge the taboo voyeurism of peering into our own windows lest we be set apart and labeled for our choices. Still many of us want to explore those spaces, hungering for something deeper.

Lilium’s Short Stories is a collection of these windows. Each song offers a rare glimpse into the mind of an artist who seeks to create without compromise. Collectively, they form a mosaic depicting the common face of these artists. Jean-Yves and Pascal set subtle arrangements that paint the landscape with light and shadow showing the betrayal in pained lines across that common face. The words tell of the struggle that drew them. With your God, with your love, with your muse… the struggle to be recognized and set apart from the sea of popular mediocrity, the desire to be rewarded for their sacrifice. They decry all at once the side of the audience that turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to the countless unconsidered efforts all around them. They implore us to be more courageous. Short Stories is rife with the self-revelations of each contributor as they lead us to hear and feel the burning need to be judged in the light and to feel their terror as they endeavor to find deliverance in their creations. The inevitable self-doubt and endless self-examination that comes of being perpetually in ones own ears. Themes are brought forth that threaten to unglue us from ourselves but are requisite for the artist if he is to find success. It is not enough to be read by everyone, the artist must be mass consumed to be aptly rewarded. The artist must be palatable to be mass consumed. It is the agony of this that pulses through Short Stories. It is the breath in its blood.

Lilium is a family of flowers. Lilies. Beautiful, sometimes delicate and other times sturdy flowers of many shapes and colors. They vary in their appearance but their essence is common. The collaborators on this record have their own way of presenting their appeals to us but they remain as partisan in the spirit of this art. With their beauty and their sentiment they are as one here. Even as each song comes to us as a separate life. It is a variegation of voices asking harmoniously for fair hearing. Pascal and Jean Yves conduct and hum with these voices, compartmentalizing the spaces they live in with lilting piano and whispering taps, swimming lines of bass that throb up and down like the complaining pain of a toothache into the sorrowful moan of a lovesick heart. With slow haunting rhythms, they create unique spaces for these songs to set up house in and make their own lives forever. They hold the door open for these songs to pass through into their well-timed spaces like phantoms that are briefly glimpsed in perfect blue light. When they pass we feel them living on invisibly behind us, left to their own devices in silence as we peek into the next window.

For those who are familiar with Pascal and Jean-Yves music we know them best as two thirds of Sixteen Horsepower. If David Eugene is the soul of that group, then Jean-Yves and Pascal are most certainly the essential heart. The artistic rift that had formed between them in the past is mended somewhat on this record as David is here with them, showing his support and solidarity but teasing and warning them of a fleeting triumph they know too well. Sixteen Horsepower are reunited here for one of their rarest recordings and one of Short Stories most interesting and telling moments. David howls menacingly: Ever weak / however strong / they are most beautiful before they’re gone. It is as beautiful and delicate as anything on the 2002 16HP LP, Folklore, which features these three in what is arguably some of their peak playing. There is no promise of their returning to us but only the calm reassurance that they will arise again and grow through their art and we will be free to follow them along as they do. Sixteen horsepower is brought to life on Short stories because where they have been is as important to these artists as where they are going.

Pascal and Jean-Yves have never laid their heads on the rail to hear what was coming down the tracks. They have kept their attention on the music that represents the greatest possible freedom of expression. Music that infused their souls with wisdom, music they consider art. They have absorbed that art and channeled it into the unique creations of their own vision. On Short Stories they achieve a singular vision with the help an ensemble of sympathetic collaborators. They tell us of a common private apocalypse, the nightmare of the unrepentant heretic or the stoic faithful martyr or the uncompromising artist. They can do nothing else and they will do it no other way.

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