The clock is slowing and time is held like a breath as daylight falls from the horizon. Waking hours spin to a slow finale through a subconscious haze flecked with deep autumnal reds and quiet yellows. Memories gradually transform into moonlit ripples on a lake until the shadows emerge and slither across the surface of the water. I shift my body weight to the other side of where I lay.
A distant radio hisses like wind through dead grasses as I move past crisp woodland branches that snap and crack as I seek a place of shelter. Hundreds of unseen eyes, hidden behind tree trunks and bracken, curiously trace my movement. I crouch down to rest as a hare approaches and briefly stops to tilt her head to make eye contact with me. I hold my breath and my feet and fingers sink into the decaying soil. My balance shifts and my tired eyelids open for a moment.
Turning my head I see an opening close by partially masked by shadows. I count silently to myself and then cautiously venture out into this unknown open space. Here the snow-covered ground rises above me in ascending steps arcing through the plains. As my breath slows I follow the faint constellations of star clusters that hang buoyantly above me. I am softly breathing and almost asleep, unsure of where I am.
Cresting the hill the sound of running water carries me back into the trees once more. I’m enticed by glistening droplets of near-frozen dew on the fallen logs that conceal the singing insects residing on the woodland floor. I pull tightly on my bedclothes as warm harmonic tones ease across my frost-kissed ears until broken twigs underfoot break my state of slumber. Back now, my pillow is familiar and warm.
The tiny fraction of time between waking and sleep, with no distinct perception of reality is a moment to be held and absorbed for as long as possible. It is the ontologically fleeting moment of the present, as our heavy eyelids close and our pulse slows, that is the inspiration inside the music of Faint, the new album on 12k by Taylor Deupree.
EDITIONS:
Faint is being released in two different editions. The Deluxe Edition comes in a boxed set containing 12 photographs Deupree took with a plastic, hand-built 35mm camera, the Faint CD and a bonus CD containing “Thaw (Reprise),” an extended 38-minute version of “Thaw” which will only be available on this CD (not sold digitally). The Standard Edition comes packaged in 12k’s new uncoated board jacket design in an edition of 1000 with the main, 51-minute, Faint album.
