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- E+E / Elysia Crampton (2013) • Album
an epic mass of sound collage. the liminality of music; of everyday sounds takes on this sort of primal urgency, in which faded memories of familiar commercials both Latin and American; of music through a broken pair of headphones; of bustling city traffic break through the psyche with the strength of a saturated kick drum. when the brutish intensity of it all slaps you sideways, you see the childlike fragility of the memory still remaining. the anonymous female voice (and it is a HELL of a voice. don’t get it twisted, for all the nothingword vomit i’m spewing up this album’s ass, it sounds seriously addictive and seriously beautiful) recontextualizing pop hits over city ambience, rainfall, crackling firewood. Drake lyrics become mournful, John Mayer cranks up the longing to Number Eleven. it is anti-colonial, reinterpreting these sounds; displacing them, to create its unfamiliarity. yet in the bleakness there is warmth. Elysia Crampton has no regard and no time for Traditional Western Music Production, and THE LIGHT THAT YOU GAVE ME TO SEE YOU acts as a brash, rugged interrogation of the “why” and when The Light shines through, it takes on a new form: a tearful, solemn, busy question: “why?” coughed through the smoke of an exhaust pipe.
1d ago
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cool review! i listened to it on youtube but unfortunately the second track was unavailable </3 my faves were reinada and fire gut
23h ago
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I can’t tell you just how much this album changed the way I thought about things. As a 15 year old who was starting to realise that things i was experiencing weren’t just normal, i desperately needed an outlet and this album was the first step in that. I would walk around my school listening to this album on repeat, writing the lyrics on the inside of my work books, drawing the elephant on anything I could.
The music just didn’t sound like anything that had been done before. It was like the sounds were conjured up by a forest losing its leaves in autumn, bare and stripped back to the point of rugged danger. I didnt quite get it on first listen, it was like i wasn’t supposed to listen to it, it was too intimate and lonely. When I properly got acquainted with it, it carried me through mental health diagnoses, tough academic years and many a tough breakup.
Love you Phil <3
Apr 16, 2025
⭐
In March of 2023 I was on tour with my band Trophy Wife. We had just played a set on the second date in a dingy hardcore bar in Philly that was selling microwaved White Castle sliders and packs of American Spirit for cheap. Ahead of us was a 17 hour drive to New Orleans that would have to be made in one day.
I woke up in the backseat somewhere in between and leaned my head on the window beside me. It was pitch black but before sunrise. The road becomes something different when you're traveling for that long, resembling more of a habitat than a construct with its own set of strict rules and guidelines. In the dark, protected by the shell of a Honda CRV, I would watch the trucks pass by like behemoth steed; big iron whales, and I am so small.
'Wooly Mammoth's Absence' became gospel during that drive. I found it before we left, sometime during our day in Philly when I was getting ready for the show. I listened alone at first, the woody nylon guitars and hushed words of Phil Elverum were a trusted secret for my ears only.
Once I showed it to them we discovered multiple versions of the song that were released over the years, my favorite of which is the first one I heard, from 'Seven New Songs'. It was a perfect companion; something wiser than me that kept me moving forward, like the only torch in a dungeon.
"Quickly forgotten was this forgetful way of life, when I left home and I lived as if I had died" he still sings quietly, and only for me.
Jan 26, 2024
lightfooted but complex instrumentals paired with pensive lyrics and a sweet delivery. def my melancholy, pensive girl album/band of the moment. thanks canada.
Feb 9, 2024
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