AOIFE NESSA FRANCES - LAND OF NO JUNCTION [CD]

Basin Rock

£10.78

Format: CD
Cat: BR008CD
Barcode: 5060168041715
Release Date: 28 Oct 2022
Genre: Folk/Americana

BLACK VINYL REPRESS. NEW ALBUM ON PARTISAN RECORDS RELEASED 28th OCTOBER.

180GM VINYL (NB THE REPRESS DOES N0T COME WITH LINEN GRAINED SLEEVE LIKE THE ORIGINAL PRESSING)

"Land of No Junction is hugely compelling... an album that goes its own way. You're strongly advised to follow the path it’s beaten." The Line of Best Fit
"The Irish songwriter’s voice shines like a headlight in fog. Her debut abounds with deceptively serene serenades and surprising lyrical shifts." Pitchfork
"Turn on, tune in, drop off: dreamy debut from enigmatic Irish auteur.... questing for the freedom to explore her own private Narnia in peace. A place of quiet certainty - it's a compelling landscape to ponder in a treacherous age." Uncut 'Album of the Month'

"sharing ambient material with Cate Le Bon and Broadcast, these are songs that chime delicately with an uncertain world" **** MOJO
"Her magnificent songwriting only makes those peaks feel higher, and the valleys lower."
Bandcamp 'Album of the Day'
"an alluring languid debut to help the winter months glide by.... drifts along with real charm"
**** The Times
"These songs are careful things, composed and played with an elegant precision, and infused with a deep, netherworldly quality" **** Metro
"a debut full of ideas.... explored with an unrestricted freedom" Loud & Quiet
"One of 2020’s best albums' The Arts Desk
"halfway between beguiling folk and melodic luxe" The Guardian
"ambient pop and dreamy, semi-orchestral psych-folk....Pentangle with Nico and Jane Weaver as co-vocalists... there is much to look forward to from this most individualistic of songwriters." Irish Times
The debut album from Aoife Nessa Frances 'Land Of No Junction' is coming on Basin Rock home to NADIA REID, JULIE BYRNE and JIM GHEDI...

Aoife (pronounced EE-fa) is a new Dublin based artist, musically it's pretty standalone. Nearest comparisons I guess are Cate Le Bon, Aldous Harding and Broadcast, but she operates very much in her own orbit. The album is called 'Land of No Junction', co-produced by Cian Nugent.

RIYL : CATE LE BON/ALDOUS HARDING/BROADCAST.

First single 'Blow Up' (named after the 1966 Antonioni picture and written before the abortion referendum was passed in Ireland in 2018) is out 16th October.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHaiVetlCRY

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction-album-review
https://www.uncut.co.uk/reviews/album/aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction-123001/?utm_source=rss
https://theartsdesk.com/new-music/album-aoife-nessa-frances-land-no-junction
https://www.forfolkssake.com/reviews/39240/album-aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction
https://theweereview.com/review/aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction/
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/c/album-reviews-with-ian-sinclair-january-16-2020
http://www.secretmeeting.co.uk/aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction-review
https://yinyangmagazine.com/aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction/
https://www.theskinny.co.uk/music/reviews/albums/aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction
https://www.loudandquiet.com/reviews/aoife-nessa-frances-land-of-no-junction/

On the eponymously titled final song of her debut album Land of No Junction, Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances (pronounced Ee-fa) sings “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of the album, recalling journeys towards an ever shifting centre - a centre that cannot hold - where maps are constantly being rewritten.

The evocative phrase is the result of a fortuitous misunderstanding. Reminiscing about childhood visits to Wales, Aoife’s musical collaborator and co-producer Cian Nugent, mentioned a train station called Llandudno Junction, which she misheard. “Land of No Junction later became a place in itself. A liminal space - a dark vast landscape to visit in dreams… A place of waiting where I could sit with uncertainty and accept it. Rejecting the distinct and welcoming the uncertain and the unknown.” Reveals Frances.
The songs traverse and inhabit this indeterminate landscape: the beginnings of love, moments of loss, discovery, fragility and strength, all intermingle and interact. Land of No Junction is shot through with a sense of mystery - an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates with smokey luminescence. Yet, through the haze, everything comes down to what, where and who you are. Frances has built a universe full of intimacy and depth, with lyrics written through a process of free thought writing. It lends the record fluidity, each song in dialogue with the next not only through language, but the way each musical choice complements or threads into another.
Navigated by the richness of Aoife’s voice, along with the layers gently built through her collaborators’ instruments (strings, drums, guitars, keys, percussion), gives a feeling of filling up space into every corner and crack. A remarkable coherent sonic world: buoyant and aqueous, with dark undercurrents. The crossroads as a place where someone can be stuck, static in the face of the future, becomes instead an amorphous realm, where the remnants of the past and what is unknown meld together and come to an understanding. Where nostalgia and newness ebb and flow in equal measure.

Tracklisting
1. Geranium
2. Blow Up
3. Here In The Dark
4. A Long Dress
5. Less Is More
6. Libra
7. In The End
8. Heartbreak Junction
9. Land Of No Junction