![]() The Flying Carpet / Ahmad to Be Beheaded / Arrow of Justice / Riot and the End of JaffarĪ Special Collectors Edition 2-CD Set featuring one of the greatest film scores from the Composer of BEN-HUR * EL CID * SPELLBOUND * SODOM AND GOMORRAH * THE JUNGLE BOOK * QUO VADIS * KING OF KINGS * MADAME BOVARY * THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES * IVANHOE * JULIUS CAESAR Palace Fight / Ahmad and the Princess, Captive / Ruby Montage (part 1) Jaffar Arrives / The Sultan’s Toys / Miniature Acrobats / The Sultan’s Toys Then it pulls the beauty from the emptiness - what it was full of all along.THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (2CD) - SCREEN ARCHIVES ENTERTAINMENT Amid days filled with monotony, technology, and anxiety, instrumentals comes as a gift, asking you to be present and listen. Lenker’s new music, instrumentals in particular, forces you to confront it and guides you there, with Lenker figuring it out for herself right alongside you. It’s a question that this lonely year has left many of us with, though. Talking to The New Yorker about her song “zombie girl,” on songs, Lenker teared up as she wondered, “Am I just hollow and empty? Or is emptiness actually something beautiful?” She was talking about breaking up with her girlfriend, which inspired much of songs and instrumentals. And does it matter? Would it make the noise any less beautiful? At times, it’s hard to tell if Lenker is the active participant or passive observer - if this is a creation, like her other pieces, or a document. But as the title suggests, it gives way to a soundscape of wind chimes, with the whistling wind and bird calls in the background once again. The B-side of the album, “mostly chimes,” is even more firmly rooted than “music for indigo.” Like the other instrumental, it begins with Lenker’s guitar, deliberate and circular. Yet there’s a lonesome undertone that never gets lost in the piece: As dynamic and spacious as “music for indigo” gets, Lenker’s guitar remains at the center, a totem of her solitude. If the music on songs was contained, shared like a secret between Lenker and the listener, then instrumentals is vast, like Lenker is sketching the mountains with each guitar strum, pick, and slide. The ambient noise of Lenker’s cabin - wood burning and birds singing outside - ground you in her environment. It’s a 21-minute acoustic guitar rambler, a composite of some of Lenker’s improvisations that would open and close each day. Turn to the A-side of instrumentals, “music for indigo,” to practice it. “Wanna listen to the sound of you blinking / wanna listen your hands soothe,” Lenker sings. ![]() Songs lead single “anything” meditates on listening as an act of love. Lenker has always challenged us to listen, even down to her technique, often singing just above a whisper. But it’s instrumentals that truly reflects the circumstances of her quarantine, where Lenker channels her isolation into something beautiful. Dive into songs first and you’ll be rewarded with hushed folk missives that feel sometimes comforting, sometimes devastating, but always special. The products reflect that simplicity: one album called songs and another instrumentals. Then, they spent their days cooking on a wood-burning stove, bathing in a nearby creek, and writing and recording songs. She invited her friend and audio engineer Phil Weinrobe out, and they built a makeshift studio. ![]() So, as Lenker spent the first weeks of the pandemic living next to her sister in the Massachusetts mountains, she got an urge to document her time in songs. When Big Thief returned last year, their two resulting albums sounded intimately personal and emotionally massive. In 2017, her band Big Thief made its first great album, Capacity then, Lenker quieted down on her solo album abysskiss in 2018. When the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic cut off folk-rock band Big Thief’s European tour, front woman Adrianne Lenker’s mind went to songwriting - a surprise to no one, considering she’s spent the past few years first emerging, then quickly establishing herself as one of music’s best and most prolific working writers. Her new music forces you to confront loneliness and guides you there, with Lenker figuring it out for herself right alongside you.
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