Album Notes

Self described as "tropical riverboat", "industrial lullabies", "music for nightmares", obviously the debut CD "Strange Arson" by GRAPHIC RECLINER is eclectic. Unless you can imagine being in a boat in your mother's arms in a humid jungle-floating from alpha brain activity into beta and into REM-only to find yourself alone, a stranger in a strange land with the breath of something you wouldn't look in the eye rasping in your ear as you drop from a cold waterfall.

You ask, "just how dark is it?" Let's start with the track names.
Zero's Welcome (translation...nothing)
Mastodon (translation...extinct)
Death Knell (translation...death knell)
Night Job (translation...hell)

This CD sounds wild, deep, lyrical, real and spontaneous and requires lights out, headphone kind of deep listening (although, I have often enjoyed "Strange Arson" while changing a diaper as well).

As a secure woman, I prefer a whisper to a slap. So when I listen to Graphic Recliner, I hear the distant bells of an Eastern philosophy and the gentle flow of an old, unpredictable river. I hear something nostalgically tragic from my old 4AD compilation. I see four guys and a girl in utter transcendental bliss in feral connection to their "organic world".

However, apparently all you have to do to get this sound is to:
Get your instrument out
Sit down
Press "record"
And presto! You are Graphic Recliner.

The only hitch is that you have to be the perfect combination of Jon Boyd, David Bellinger, Fletcher Barber, Jennifer Fletcher (see, even that is strange) and Bruce Beaton. This is because "Strange Arson" is not a self-indulgent electric keyboard pad of "soundscapes" with painful samples of whale songs. This CD is in fact a self-indulgent collection of music made mostly through handcrafted, acoustical instruments. If you hear a whale, it is only because you were once a whale in your past life and all that resonates as dark and vast reminds you of your old family pod.

Diana Bright
2-'03