-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Virginia Astley
ALBUM...: Hope In A Darkened Heart
GENRE...: Ambient
STYLE...: Electronic, Ethereal Dream Pop, Abstract, Minimal
YEAR....: 1986
LABEL...: WEA
COUNTRY.: United Kingdom
PLACE...: Garston, Hertfordshire
ENCODER.: LAME 3.100 -V 0
BITRATE.: 250 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 9
SIZE....: 70.22 MB
URL..: https://www.virginiaastley.com/disc/albums/html/hope.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Astley
https://www.virginiaastley.com/biography
https://www.bing.com/k/celebrities/virginia-astley/timeline
- TRACKLIST
1 Some Small Hope 4:10
2 A Father 3:51
3 So Like Dorian 4:32
4 I'm Sorry 5:45
5 Tree Top Club 3:49
6 Charm 5:01
7 Love's A Lonely Place To Be 3:27
8 A Summer Long Since Passed 4:37
9 Darkness Has Reached Its End 3:47
Total Playtime: 38:59
Virginia Astely featured on Bandcamp Daily:
https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/virginia-astley-discography
*
The key personnel on Hope In A Darkened Heart were: Virginia Astley (vocals),
Ryuichi Sakamoto (producer, arranger, musician), David Sylvian (vocals), Mo
Foster (musician), Anne Stephenson (musician), Jo Wells (musician), Tony
Phillips (recording engineer), Steve 'Syco' Williams (assistant recording
engineer) and Masaki Sekijima (programmer).
Ryuichi had spent most of the flight from Japan listening to Virginia's demos
on cassette in order to plan out his arrangements.
'Darkness Has Reached Its End' was previously released as a single in
November 1985. The children on backing vocals are three of Virginia's nieces:
Aminta Townshend, Zelda & Layla Astley.
'Tree Top Club' was based on Virginia's childhood memories, penned as an
'open letter' to Virginia's twin sister Alison. The theme of the song was
inspired by a tree top club formed by Virginia's older brothers. During a
pre-song talk at the 1985 Riverside performance, Virginia explained how both
her and twin sister Alison were never allowed in because they didn't have the
required passports! 'Tree Top Club' had previously featured in live
performances since 1984. A demo version of the track also appeared on the
1984 compilation cassette Dreams And Desires.
'Charm' was originally titled 'The Great Love'.
The strings arrangements for 'A Father' and 'Charm' had been written by
Virginia's father, film and television composer, Edwin 'Ted' Astley.
*
"I think I sit down and play the piano when I'm feeling fed up." This isn't
the confession of a musician known. In a 1983 program for Radio Greenwich
Sound, Virginia Astley told an interviewer. Anger seems like an unlikely
inspiration for the British singer-songwriter, daughter of TV composer Edwin
Astley and sister-in-law to Pete Townshend. Astley's music has a surface
cheer and a deep introspection that seems to emerge from restraint and a rich
inner life. What emerged from that frustration was an air of innocence and
melancholy, and that runs throughout her 1986 album Hope in a Darkened Heart,
lending an edge to its gorgeous, wistful arrangements.
Astley's second album followed up her 1983 debut From Gardens Where We Feel
Secure, a set of instrumentals which evoked the pastoral sounds of the
English countryside. On the surface, her first album of pop songs continued
to plumb the sunshine that her debut title suggests. But soon the anxiety
inherent in the Where We Feel Secure part comes to the forefront as Astley
emerges from the metaphorical gardens.
Ryuichi Sakamoto produced and arranged Hope in a Darkened Heart, and his own
melancholy sheen comes through from the opener. "Some Small Hope," a duet
with David Sylvian, launches the album with one of its best melodies.
Astley's diminutive voice suggests childhood, but her mind doesn't; her first
words on the album: "All those dreams lie unfulfilled." Sakamoto's
arrangement recalls his own work, building up a lush orchestral sound around
Astley's choirboy timbre. A synth pulse suggests electronic crickets,
reliable as a metronome and the passage of time, the spell broken by a
dissonant middle section that seems to echo the decay of a line that Astley
and Sylvian sing in tandem: "Like a corpse deep in the earth I'm so alone."
It's a modestly gorgeous piece, and when the synths open up in big chords, it
lets the light in on all that despair: "Now you've gone/ Time will pass/
Friends will leave/ Close my eyes/ Far away/ Some small hope."
On paper, those lyrics are Joy Division-level depressing, but resilience is
built into this music, the synth washes and simple melodies providing the
promise of its title. "Father" is perhaps darker still, the bleak gothic mode
shifting to the bleak reality of abandonment, dressed in a deceptively pretty
song. Such bitterness continues in "So Like Dorian," in which Astley's
thoughts return to death, this time in rebuke to a lover who betrayed her:
"I've tasted your tongue/ Like a worm from the grave/ Had you inside me/ Then
like a rock beside me."
"Some Small Hope" and the ironically dirge-like "Charm" were both released as
singles from Hope in a Darkened Heart, but the album's centerpiece is a
re-recorded version of a single released three years earlier. With an angelic
intro that filters bright dream pop through baroque sensibilities, "Love's A
Lonely Place to Be" didn't make a dent in the charts, but it was one of the
more enchanting singles of a largely bombastic decade. Astley told Radio
Greenwich Sound that she wrote it in the aftermath of a bad relationship. The
irresistible intro and sing-song "ha ha" seems to promise cheer, but this
loveliness again is the conduit for regret. "You're not my friend/ And I'm
not your friend/ How can we deceive/ Ourselves like this?" Like many of
Astley's melodies, this sounds like a nursery rhyme, and like many nursery
rhymes, there's a unsettling undercurrent to these songs of seeming
innocence. Astley follows this with a rerecording of the From Gardens
favorite "A Summer Long Since Passed," and the verb tense says it all: the
idyllic time is gone.
Still, the morose lyrics are redeemed by music that can't help but shine a
light through the darkness. Hope earned some college radio airplay in the
U.S. at the time, but, perhaps thanks in part to Sakamoto's contribution,
Astley seemed more appreciated in Japan, and in the '90s she released two
more solo albums on Nippon Columbia. After all these years, her music seems
to be on the upswing, with a major revisit of From Gardens on Pitchfork and
airplay on Gideon Coe's BBC radio program. She's become active on Bandcamp,
where she makes digital versions of all her albums available. And, although
"Father" indicates a fraught childhood, she tells her Bandcamp fans that
she's thinking of recording one of her father's songs. Maybe, even in the
face of despair, there's hope after all.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
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