Album | Astralingua – Safe Passage

Time is relative to Astralingua. Their debut LP Safe Passage follows the release of their debut EP ten years ago. Understanding how they record helps to explain the long gestation period of their new effort. They record everything themselves, taking their recording equipment with them as they travel. Half of the new record was recorded in the Mojave Desert, while the rest was recorded in a cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains, with overdubs split between LA, New York, Denver and Besancon, France.

Joseph Andrew Thompson and Anne Rose Thompson create the kind of music that transcends time and place. Fitting into a centuries tradition of folk music, their brand of “Nomadic space folk” is generally of modern vintage, yet also includes lyrics derived from William Blake’s 1794 poem, A Poison Tree. In describing Blake’s work Joseph also explains ends up explaining his own, “His unique artistic vision, unaffected by marketable fads – its purity and passion – is that with which so many artists since him have connected.”

There’s a deliberateness to the music of Astralingua, songs are crafted with care and allowed to develop over time until they reach fruition. “There’s a magical longing in our sound, a reaching for some kind of solace found in another world.” Using a variety of instruments, strings, woodwinds, mandolins, and hand percussion Astralingua have created something unique. They are truly a band out of time. Nowhere is this clearer than on ‘Visitor’, where the concepts of time and place are taken to a different level. “Come with me into the sky, where the watchers roam, there the others wait for you, let me take you home.”

Musically they go beyond love songs, striving to create a musical vision that discusses matters of the soul. Questions of consciousness and the complex inner world form the basis for their songs. Gentle shadings and colours generate a structure uniquely their own. Astralingua take you a journey to something old, yet new. Theirs is music outside of today’s time and space, transporting the listener on a journey beyond the constraints of what is fashionable. With Safe Passage that journey begins anew.