THE RHEINGANS SISTERS - RECEIVER

Cat. no: BENDI5
Format: CD
Barcode: 5065002172082
Release Date: 23rd October 2020
Genre: Folk

Receiver is the new album by The Rheingans Sisters, their first since 2018’s Bright Field - a record that dazzled audiences and critics with its Leonard Cohen-esque lyrical imagery and strikingly inventive arrangements of violins, banjo, Bearnaise three-holed flute and Pyrenean stringed drum.

The Rheingans reputation as innovators within the folk tradition was confirmed when they were awarded a 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for their original song Mackerel, followed by a 2019 nomination for Best Group in recognition of their mesmerising and minimalist concert performances. Receiver is produced by Andy Bell (The Furrow Collective, Karine Polwart, Sam Sweeney) and is their first release on the bendigedig label, the team behind Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita’s award-winning album SOAR.

The album’s artwork is a collaboration with visual artist Pierre- Olivier Boulant, whose ‘solargraphs’ are pin-hole camera images made over long periods using everyday containers strapped to his balcony in Toulouse. Like the sisters’ music, these images are born of a patient and deliberate listening to the world to find an authentic expression of what’s being received.

Receiver is an album rich with European and Scandinavian musical traditions, having more in common with the ECM recordings of Swedish fiddler Lena Willemark or the experimental edges of the French trad scene, than the music of
their English folk contemporaries; the presence of jazz saxophonist and  improvisor Rachael Cohen (the only other musician on the record) is a clear indication of how far from that world this record travels.

The affectingly plaintive voices of The Rheingans Sisters are used sparingly on Receiver, befitting the impressionistic direction the lyrics have taken this time. These are songs where the natural world is a palpable surrounding presence, or the most vivid and enduring element of a memory.

There are myths and rituals, beauty, sadness and quiet political anger. There are tunes for the turning season, tunes for home and sleep, tunes for and about dancing that pulse through this record with deep, strange drones and the shadows of feet.

UK Folk Radio
Album of the month feature (review on release date 23rd Oct)
The Yellow Of The Flowers is single of the day on 18th September:
https://www.folkradio.co.uk/2020/09/rheingans-sisters-yellow-flowers/
FATEA – Louise Jordan
http://www.fatea-records.co.uk/magazine/reviews/TheRheingansSisters/
SPIRAL EARTH –
https://www.spiralearth.co.uk/the-rheingans-sisters-to-release-new-albumreceiver/

Tracks: The Yellow Of The Flowers / stbj rka / Salt Of The Earth / One More Banjo / Insomnia / Lament For Lost Sleep / Moustiques Dans Les M res / The Bones Of The World / Urjen / After The Bell Rang / From Up Here / Orogen / The Photograph / Waltz From Loz re