ARTIST: Mike Andrews
TITLE: Hand On String
LABEL: Elgin Park Recordings
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 188kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 42m total
RELEASE DATE: 2006-05-23
RIP DATE: 2006-03-21
Track List
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1. Something Already Happened 2:05
Again
2. Tracings 4:26
3. Just A Thought 3:30
4. Orange Meet Lemon 3:18
5. See Me Plain 4:36
6. Sweeping, Cleaning And 1:43
Organizing
7. Love Is Tired 3:43
8. Hand On String 5:18
9. Hello Lemon 2:23
10. Through The Fog 4:45
11. Before The Echo 3:55
12. Something Already Happened 2:45
Release Notes:
While you're sure to have heard Mike Andrew's music, you probably don't know
his name. Mike Andrews is not a star. He is a dedicated, prolific and
multifaceted artist, songwriter, composer, pianist, and ukulele player. Mike has
finally overcome shyness and set aside his productions and collaborations to
write the music for himself - a musical reflection of his own life and love
story.
Those who have heard of him associate Mike Andrews' name with the score music of
Donnie Darko, celebrated TV show Freaks & Geeks and Miranda July's Me and You
and Everyone We Know. He's also credited as a producer, songwriter or composer
on more than 20 albums, including those for Inara George, Brendan Benson, Gary
Jules, DJ Greyboy and Metric.
The forthcoming full-length Hand on String will be released on his own
newly-established label, Elgin Park Recordings, in late Spring 2006. It's deep.
It's dark. (As in Nick Drake-dark). And it's been a long time since you've heard
anyone this passionate about mellow. His goal was to create a musical and
magical sense of transcendent calm, a respite from the hustle and glow of Los
Angeles' hyperactive mediascape. He made it at his Glendale, California, home,
all alone (well, almost... LA chanteuse Inara George and pianist Greg Kurstin
both contribute breathtaking guest performances). Naturally, the album expresses
Mike's singular sense of intimacy and tenderness.
Take the second track, ôTracings.ö Distant vocal harmonies float like vapor,
echoing the British folk-psychedelia of troubadour John Martyn. His production
of Margo Mitchell's ôJust a Thoughtö channels McCartney's Ram, all filtered
harpsichords and mischievous synths. On the touching öSee Me Plain,ö birdsong
and Casio flutter above Mike's acoustic latticework. And ôOrange Meet Lemonö
casts shadows of Robert Wyatt's hazy, yet nimble, cosmic folk-jazz. Lyrical
shades of another LA dawn gone to waste; ruminations on discovery and
perception, wakefulness and disease. And Kurstin's elegant piano arrangement is
guaranteed to turn heads.
Like everything Mike Andrews becomes involved with, Hand on String is not your
average product. It comes packaged with a full-size, 20-page book of watercolor
illustrations by friend and renowned graphic artist Geoff McFetridge, perhaps
best known for designing the opening credits to Adapatation and The Virgin
Suicides. The book is inspired by the album and its beauty is on parallel.
The collection of twelve songs is delivered with honesty, intimacy and soulful
grace, capturing the mysticism of falling in love, loneliness of heartbreak and
every emotion that runs deeply in between.